Tax Season with EWA: Lessons from Year One and What’s Ahead

Speaker 1 – 00:00
EWA Tax has been kind of in full force for an entire calendar year. I worked in a typical CPA firm for close to 15
years and it’s amazing what kind of efficiencies we’ve gained by joining a wealth advisory practice with a tax
practice. With the detail that our advisors go into with the clients meeting so often and taking really good notes, I
can refer to those and I can get 99.9% of our answers done without ever having to contact the client.
Speaker 2 – 00:28
I think one of the beautiful things of having taxes inside of our wealth management firm is we have a very intimate
knowledge of a client situation and then not only that, but a lot of the tax documents we’re already going to have in
house for them.
Speaker 1 – 00:39
We’ve partnered with this software called Stanford Tax and what it is it you integrate the prior tax return into this
system and it builds a customized list based on all activity that was on that return.
Speaker 2 – 00:54
We want this to be as a proactive, as a process as possible and save our clients only non renewable resource
which is their time having the philosophy meshed together where you’re balancing a wealth, a tax, insurance,
estate planning, all of this is one picture and this client’s in the center. Everything centers around what’s best
interest in the client. We talk about tax and wealth, everything. At ewa, our philosophy is foreign. Welcome
everybody. Excited to discuss how to make year two of EWA Tax Services the best year ever. First, Tyler wanted to
reflect on year one. Obviously year one went I think tremendously well being that we now have two more one,
another veteran CPA Nick Rosen. And then also Corey that’s joined us that’s in the middle of getting a cpa. So
we’ve tripled our tax force after one year.
Speaker 2 – 01:51
But yeah, let’s just reflect on year one. What do you think? What went well and what lessons did we learn? And
that’s now leading to a calibration process that we’re doing ahead of year two, 2025.
Speaker 1 – 02:06
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Yeah. Overall just start by saying I do think it went well. I feel it was successful. You know, it doesn’t matter how
many years you do this or how well oiled your firm is when it comes to tax filing season, there’s always road bumps
you have to get over, forms get delayed. You know, maybe clients go on vacation, deadlines get compressed. So
you just kind of learn to take those in stride and deal with them the best you can. But I kind of measure tax season
success in a Few ways. So, one, were returns completed accurately to, you know, was a quality high to reduce audit
risk, notice risk? The answer to that is absolutely. Kind of always take pride in, you know, triple checking things,
making sure that everything’s accurate there. The second thing is, you know, were all deadlines met?
Speaker 1 – 03:07
Which they were. The majority of our returns were filed by the initial April deadline. Any returns that were extended
were done shortly after. A lot of those extensions were due to K1s or forms not being finalized. So the returns were
done shortly after the deadline. And if were pushed closer to the October deadline, as soon as forms became
available, we got them done quickly. And I think the last and most important metric in success is were clients
happy? Were they happy with the results? Were they happy with response time? And I think the answer to that is
yes. We sent surveys out, got good results with those, and then, you know, just clients kind of telling you face to
face, they’re. They’re happy with it. So overall, I’m happy with the first year. I.
Speaker 1 – 04:03
Hours got a little long in a few weeks there during crunch time.
Speaker 2 – 04:08
I think when I had pitched Tyler for you to come, were like, this will be the best tax season you’ve ever had. And
then were expecting like, you know, a hundred of our clients or a hundred returns, and it turned into like 200. And
how many did we do? 260. And you were the only person. You had, you know, a couple advisors doing some of the
administrative work to help you out. But how many returns did you had to do in year one? It was all you.
Speaker 1 – 04:29
It was around 2. 50.
Speaker 2 – 04:30
Yeah, 250. Okay. Which is like, these aren’t, like, easy. Some of them are easy returns, but a lot of them were, you
know, complex trust business returns, multiple entities, LLCs, et cetera. Right. So it wasn’t exactly the easiest.
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Speaker 1 – 04:45
Yeah, a mix of everything and it transition years. So me joining the firm and starting EWA Tax closer to the end of
the year, having to transition the clients over it, that’s always adds another level of difficulty in those years. So, you
know, now that we have it under our belt, we know what to expect. Looking forward to move to the next year?
Speaker 2 – 05:10
Yeah. No, appreciate it, Tyler. Appreciate you putting in those extra hours. I know we’re on the phone, you know,
pretty much, I don’t know, almost daily during the tax season, working out the communication, everything like that.
And it was. It was a fun but stressful time. I think adversity makes us stronger. Right. So, you know, a couple
things. Planning. I. I Remember coming up to Erie back in oh geez was August of September of last year and were
just starting to plan of like what do you see in the public accounting world that like we could make as a client
experience? And some of the things just to reiterate that we did is I think one of the beautiful things of having
taxes inside of our wealth management firm is we have a very intimate knowledge of a client situation.
Speaker 2 – 05:49
So we know, you know already what’s going to be on their tax return. And then not only that, but a lot of the tax
documents we’re already going to have in house for them. So the amount of homework and communication you
talked about, you know, CPAs typically pick up and put down a tax return maybe 50 to 100 times. And so our goal
was let’s not give homework to the client, let’s be proactive throughout the year, compile all the information that we
know is going to be part of their tax situation, get it in a ready to go checklist, let us assemble everything that we
possibly can, and then let’s go to the clients just for what? Instead of sending them a 200 page, you know, survey
of did they purchase farmland or somebody.
Speaker 2 – 06:31
I remember getting that survey from a prior CPA that was doing mine. It was like I just threw the thing out and I
was like, listen, here’s all the stuff. I think I, you guys should know everything else about my situation. But they
didn’t like that. But I never filled out that survey. But I know a lot of people that did. But my point being is we want
this to be as a proactive, as a process as possible and save our clients only non renewable resource, which is their
time. And so to do that, you know, we pre assembled those lists, we signed power of attorneys which allows Tyler. I
think the beautiful thing, you know, I can speak for myself because you know, Tyler does my taxes. When I get a
notice from the irs, I’m able to forward to Tyler.
Speaker 2 – 07:13
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Instead of having to jump on a three way call with Tyler’s able to go directly to the IRS on my behalf with that power
of attorney and save my time and send my headache and say, hey, here’s what’s going on. And that was so much
stress taken off my plate. And so now that we’re able to do that for all of our clients, that just part of our standard
operating procedure is getting this power of attorney signed. It’s been incredible. So the one pain point that we
uncovered, you know, we obviously with tax prep, we want everything to be as paperless as possible because we
work with clients in over 40 states right now was tracking down the checklist and of, you know, what’s still owed
and clients, you know, Fidelity would delay the direct indexing accounts.
Speaker 2 – 07:54
I think it was all the way until mid March. And so what Tyler, tell us about the upgrade. Because I think last year we
used, you know, just a very simple email. Here’s the checklist and then a secure Dropbox link to get the data. And
the one issue that we ran in is Tyler was, you know, manually going in and checking off. We got these eight
documents, we’re still missing these two. And then the advisor having to go back to try to gather those documents
from the clients and clients forgetting, you know, saying, okay, here’s an email that was sent to me a month ago. I
think I sent all this stuff, but not those two. So you’ve come up with a solution and we’ve upgraded our technology
to solve all of these issues.
Speaker 2 – 08:37
But we’re going to go, you know, all in to, you know, adopting this and hoping all of our clients adopt this, which is
going to alleviate any kind of miscommunication that occur. But yeah, Tyler, tell us how this works and I guess how
excited you are about adopting this new system because I think this was the one issue that we saw but we solved
through a lot of manual labor time and through a lot of follow ups that we didn’t ideally don’t want to have to make
and bother our clients want to have this all automated.
Speaker 1 – 09:07
Yeah, really excited about the upgrade. But just to reiterate kind of what you were talking about, so yes, our
previous method was just using secure links and, or just general email. And so the problem with that, as you said,
you know, W2s are issued at the end of January. A client sends us their W2. Then a few weeks later they’ll get
some 1099s and a few weeks later they’ll get brokerage account statements. And so when they’re just kind of
forwarding things or uploading things, they have to kind of go back and say, well, what did I send already? And that.
So there’s email communication going back, there’s client calling and say, well what don’t you have? What did I
send already? So what we’ve done is we’ve partnered with this software called Stanford Tax.
Speaker 1 – 10:01
And what it is it you integrate the prior tax return into this system and it builds a customized list based on all
activity that was on that return. There’s no fluff. There’s no, like you talked about, no documents in there that
there’s no way the client would have. It’s clean, it’s concise. And what will happen is when clients register for this is
where their tax list is housed forever, basically until the returns done and you roll it forward to the next year.
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Speaker 2 – 10:40
And so when I want to add in one thing so that software pools, maybe 90% of the situation is the same from like 24
to 25 if we use that, for example. But our advisors also internally, you know, you will typically meet with clients one
to 10 times per year. And so we have a system that they’re notating anything that relates to their tax situation in 20
and that’s getting communicated to our tax team. So that list that gets populated from the last tax return also will
have a detail of any specific circumstances that happen in the current year as well.
Speaker 1 – 11:16
Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. I’ve noticed. It’s amazing to me. So I worked in, I guess a typical CPA firm for close
to 15 years and it’s amazing what kind of efficiencies we’ve gained by joining a wealth advisory practice with a tax
practice. It’s, it’s little things you don’t think of. So you know, a client has a new baby. If you get to the end of the tax
return, you need a direct deposit information for a refund. We have all of that housed. And like you said, with the
detail that our advisors go into with the clients meeting so often and taking really good notes, I can refer to those
and I can get 99.9% of our answers done without ever having to contact the client.
Speaker 1 – 12:06
And so yes, to your point, most tax situations from year to year are 90% comparable in terms of the forms you get,
employer, where you have your money invested, et cetera. And that extra 10% that might change. We already have,
we know about it ahead of time because of our processes.
Speaker 2 – 12:31
So instead of previously, I don’t. We would get, you know, we would email like 50 different CPAs of our, you know,
split up. And part of our quarter. One process we have for advisors is like, advisors look through the last year’s
notes and a lot of those will be like in our CRM records of like, hey, they did a Roth conversion. Hey, we know they
sold that. You know, part of their RSU is at work. We’re not going to have the tax documents, but let’s keep track of
that. And so we Would send this like 10 bullet point list to CPAS and CPAS will give us the feedback of no one else
is doing this. Thanks so much, this was so helpful.
Speaker 2 – 13:03
But being able to do this behind the scenes, not having because before clients would have to basically play
telephone tag between their advisor and their CPA and that’s eliminated. So now you know, our goal is to save the
time of the client so the attention to detail, the proactiveness and the communication. So that’s in the game of
telethone I, I save that’s where there can be disagreements with what’s being done. You know CPAs typically focus
on saving taxes. Now financial advisors are thinking like forward. I think it’s all a balancing act. So then if a client
gets in between a disagreement there’s just a lot of time being wasted.
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Speaker 2 – 13:36
Having the collaboration behind the scenes and then having the, you know, the philosophy meshed together where
you’re balancing a wealth, a tax, insurance, estate planning, all of this is one picture and this client is in the center.
Everything centers around what’s best interests the client is amazing. But yeah, I think that’s such an important
point that I don’t think clients are necessarily going to see but they’re going to feel the difference of instead of, you
know, old CPA just saying hey, Give me these 200 pieces of information that’s on you. I’m just going to put the
check boxes and the tax return on. The software is being proactive and so we’re able to not only gather the data
and save time but the tax strategies. We’re able to communicate, you know, between you and advisors to
incorporate.
Speaker 2 – 14:26
So a lot of this stuff does have a calendar year deadline. Some of it has like a tax filing deadline. Making sure the
coordination of that all happens flawlessly is really key. But anyways, back to the point of the Stanford tax system,
how all of this flows into. So you’re saying it’s essentially going to be a carry forward from the prior year plus the
detailed notes of the advisors going in and then what is ultimately the client the end result for the client.
Speaker 1 – 14:49
See so a client will have, there’s no big, they call them organizers which everyone hates. Which was basically a
client doing their taxes for us filling out like you said, 20 pages worth of information that we already have concise
list that might be eight or 10 documents. This is what was on your return last year. And you can upload them in
bulk if you want to. You can upload them individually but what it does is it checks it off for you. So if today a client
goes in and uploads four things, it automatically reads it checks it off the list for them and if they come back three
weeks later, they open the software, their account and it’s all current say they can see. Oh, didn’t give that yet. It just
was issued. I’m going to upload it now. So. Really neat tool.
Speaker 1 – 15:40
It’s going to help save clients time. It’s going to save our time. I’m pretty excited about it.
Speaker 2 – 15:45
So if I just use me as a case example, If I have 20 things I owe you in this list and like 16 of them are available like
mid February, upload those. I get a email from my advisor saying hey, there’s a couple documents, you know, click
this link. I click the link, it goes into Stanford, it shows, okay, here’s the four outstanding items. I don’t need to keep
any kind of mental checklist or Excel spreadsheet. It’s all going to be automated in here and that way when stuff
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comes due I can go in. I don’t need a wonder. Did I submit these 10 things? It’s all, it’s all there and available and
I’m basically go in whenever the documents come and it’s just an easy drag and drop. And then I know from a
security.
Speaker 2 – 16:25
We did an extensive research and talks into the safety and the cybersecurity protection of this software and why
this has got to be. Dropbox is obviously secure, but we don’t want to receive anything over an email. You can
encrypt emails even. So this is going to be the best possible way from a cybersecurity perspective to get the
documents electronically as well.
Speaker 1 – 16:48
Yes, way safer, way easier and I mean you could even delete them. It’s all housed in the cloud. So if a client wants
to clean out their old documents, can delete them from their computer. We already have them. It organizes them in
a nice neat binder so we know what’s still missing as well when we get in there.
Speaker 2 – 17:09
Yeah. So I guess from A to any. I want to close this up here in a second. This is, this is a message, you know, to our
EWA clients that utilize us for taxes. But any other thoughts or things you’d like to say heading into 2025 tax
season?
Speaker 1 – 17:26
A few things I’m excited about which we touched on. So we have expanded our team. We have two tax focused
people that have started this summer really excited about having them. Their experience aligns really well with our
Clients, they specialize individual small business taxes. So looking forward to having them on the team. I think
they’re going to be a great resource. They’ve already actually started, they got great work ethic, great enthusiasm
for this and growing the firm. So they’ve already started to help roll forward client profiles and do projections and
have already started, you know, meeting and communicating with clients. So really excited to have them on the
team.
Speaker 1 – 18:13
And then the other point is now that EWA Tax has been kind of in full force for an entire calendar year, we feel like
we’re a little bit more ahead this year than we were last year with that transition period. You know, we’ve done a lot
of projections. We feel like clients are kind of in good spots or at least in the know and can plan for what April’s
going to look like. So you know, I’m looking forward to the next filing season. I think it’s going to be, I think it’s going
to be a good one.
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Speaker 2 – 18:44
We talk about tax and wealth, everything. At ewa, our philosophy is one ship. So every team member Ewa, we want
them on the same boat, same ship, rolling in the same direction ultimately to serve you, our client in the best way
possible. So that’s our commitment to you, is making sure, you know, we take a team approach and take everything
we can off your plate to save you and to provide the best experience you’ve ever had from not only a financial
planning, a wealth but from a tax perspective which can be a stressful time for a lot of people.
Speaker 2 – 19:14
The only thing we ask for you is I’ve noticed in running a business and scaling a business and be able to serve
more clients is that when you operate in different systems it creates the confusion, miscommunications and that
can increase the opportunity for mistakes to occur. Now luckily we’re able to year one went very smoothly. A lot of,
you know, manual labor and communication. So I think that the win for everybody here with this new software is
that you know, comm. Everyone’s on the same ship, including our clients. We all are seeing the same thing. It’s all
transparent, the checklist. So our only ask from you, our client is to adopt this system as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 – 19:56
And so Tyler is going to send this email out, it’s going to have a link, going to introduce you to Nick and Corey
directly, want you communicating obviously directly with your advisor. And then one of these individuals, Tyler,
Nick or Corey will be in direct contact with you. And then we’re going to send another wave of emails because, you
know, we have a lot of diverse, you know, clients in different states, different ages, different preferences for
technology. So we are going to offer one one zoom calls if there’s any questions or if there’s any troubleshooting
needed to get up and running with this new technology. But this is, you know, year one.
Speaker 2 – 20:31
The importance of us asking our team to adopt this and our clients to adopt this so we’re all in the same boat, will
be really important, but then every year after it will make this seamless on a go forward basis for everybody. So
we’re really looking forward to a smooth 2025 tax season. Tyler, I know you’re really looking forward to having a
team now backing you up as we grow. How many tax returns are we set to do for 2025 right now?
Speaker 1 – 20:58
I think we’re a little over 300.
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Speaker 2 – 21:00
Okay. I expect that to grow some, some of our clients not to names or, you know, name occupations like
physicians, for example, and I’m just kidding, we’ll probably get like another 50 to 100, like, literally after the new
year to ask us to do so. We, we will have to make some kind of cutoff date for those. So, you know, we make sure,
you know, our existing clients are getting taken care of and then obviously welcome new clients, but we got to do
that in a way that everybody wins. So looking forward to it and thanks for listening. We’ll catch you very soon on
the next podcast.