Tax Resolution Academy - r

Here is the moment that changed how I think about pricing.

A client came into the front office to pick up his return. The bill was just over $11,000. He had paid roughly $2,500 the year before. He looked at the number, looked up, and told us he was happy with it.

I was the one standing there trying to process what I had just watched.

That client was not paying for the hours that went into the return. He was paying for the outcome, the expertise, and the confidence that it was done right. The time involved was irrelevant to him.

Hourly billing gets this backwards. It punishes you for being experienced and efficient. The faster you work, the less you earn. Value pricing flips the equation. You set the fee based on what the outcome is worth, not how long it takes you to deliver it.

I charge $3,000 per entity now. Individual and business together is $6,000. The last four clients hired me at that number without negotiating because the alternative was not working with me. That is not a hard sell. That is a clear price and a clear standard.

What would change in your practice if you stopped billing by the hour starting with your next new client? Drop it in the comments.

Here is the problem with quoting hourly fees. The moment you say a number per hour, the client starts calculating how many hours your work should take. The conversation shifts from the value of the outcome to the cost of your time. That is not a conversation you want to be in.

The alternative is three packages. Call them whatever you want. Bronze, silver, gold. Basic, standard, premium. The names do not matter. What matters is that you build three tiers, price them intentionally, and let the client choose.

Most people will pick the middle option. That is not a guess. That is how people make decisions when given a hierarchy of choices.

Set the rules clearly. The package is the package. No mixing items from different tiers, no removing things they think they will not use for a lower price. A gym does not refund your membership fee because you never touched the treadmill. You are selling access to a complete service at a defined price.

At the top tier add something worth the premium. Concierge access, unlimited email, priority response. Just set the boundaries up front. Unlimited email still means replies between 9 and 5. You define the terms.

Have you moved to package pricing yet and what has the client response been like? Drop it in the comments.

One of the most common questions I hear from tax professionals considering resolution work is this. If the client cannot afford to pay the IRS, how are they going to afford to pay me?

Here is a story that answers that directly.

I had a 91 year old client come to me with an IRS problem. I discounted my fee before I even asked a single question about his financial situation because I assumed he was on a fixed income and could not afford much. We pulled his transcripts, found two unfiled returns, and confirmed he owed $26,000.

I never asked about assets. My staff finally did during a follow up call. He had a million dollars in an investment account in CDs and cash.

He was not broke. He just did not know how to deal with the situation. That is exactly what you are there for.

Do not price yourself based on assumptions. Let the intake process tell you what you are actually working with. What question do you wish you had asked a client earlier in the process? Drop it in the comments.

I want to draw a clear line between two kinds of clients, because the distinction matters more than most practitioners realize.

A tax prep client is typically price-sensitive and deadline-driven. They want to know you can do the job and they want to pay as little as possible for it. When they ask if you can match what they paid someone else last year, they are telling you something important about how they see the service. It is a commodity to them, and they are shopping accordingly. That is not necessarily a client relationship worth spending a lot of energy to win or keep.

A resolution client is a completely different situation. They are not calling you to compare prices. They are calling you because something has gone badly wrong and they do not know how to fix it. The IRS may already be levying their wages or their bank account. They have been losing sleep. They may have already tried to handle it themselves and made it worse.

I had a client contact me after he had tried to resolve a wage levy on his own. He ended up spending over six hours on the phone with the IRS, bouncing between people, getting nowhere. By the time he called me he was not asking what I charged. He wanted to know if I could stop it.

That is the resolution client. They needed you last week. They are finally calling you today. The question they are asking is not "what do you charge" — it is "can you actually fix this."

If you can answer that second question with confidence, price stops being the obstacle.

Follow this page for more on how to build and position a tax resolution practice.

Tax Resolution Academy — taxresolutionacademy.com

Here is a question worth asking about your current client intake process. How many times does the same piece of information get typed in by you or your staff before a new client is fully onboarded?

For most practices the answer is more than once. Sometimes significantly more.

The fix is not complicated. Use AI to create template letters and emails with placeholders for the client specific details. You insert the name, the relevant numbers, and send. No starting from scratch. Then use a tool like Zapier or Make to connect your different software platforms through their API. When information goes into one system it moves to the next one automatically. No duplicate entry. No copy and paste. No dropped details.

This is not about replacing the personal side of client service. It is about making sure the back end of your practice runs cleanly so you can focus on the front end.

What part of your intake or onboarding process is eating the most time right now? Drop it in the comments.

Every week I send two recurring emails. I have not written either of them in a while.

I built an AI agent that pulls from a few source documents, formats the content, and drops a draft straight into my Gmail folder on schedule. I open it, make minor edits, and hit send. That is it.

The part that still gets me is how straightforward the setup was once I actually sat down to build it. The learning curve people imagine around AI is almost always bigger than the actual curve.

If you have recurring emails, reports, or updates that follow the same format every week, that is exactly what AI is built for. You do not need to be technical. You need to be willing to spend a few hours setting it up once so it runs on its own after that.

What is one recurring task in your practice that follows the same format every time? Drop it in the comments. That is probably your first AI project.

Here are the scheduling rules that changed how my practice ran.

Client calls at two set times per day only. No live phone answering under any circumstances. Mondays and Fridays completely blocked from client meetings. Recurring calendar items audited and cut if they had no clear agenda or purpose.

Most tax professionals treat their calendar like an open door and then wonder why focused work never happens. Availability is not the same as service. It is just noise dressed up as responsiveness.

Add exercise, real food, time blocking for deep work, and learning to use AI for the tasks that eat your day without requiring your judgment. Put all of that together and the practice starts running on your terms instead of everyone else's.

What is one change you have made to your schedule that actually gave you time back? Drop it in the comments.

Here is a habit worth building starting today.

About 15 minutes before you plan to leave the office, do a brain dump. Write down or type out everything you know needs to get done. Do not filter it, just get it out of your head. Then look at that list and identify the top three things that have to happen tomorrow. Put those on a separate sheet or as your first calendar reminder of the morning.

When you walk in tomorrow you are not deciding where to start. You already know.

The second piece is protecting a one to three hour block during your highest energy window for that priority work. For most people that is early morning. That block is not for email. It is not for phone calls. It is for the work that actually moves things forward.

Two habits. 15 minutes of planning tonight and one protected block tomorrow morning. What does your current morning routine look like before you get into real work? Drop it in the comments.

Here is what I hear from almost every tax professional I work with. There is not enough time. I am already stretched too thin. I cannot take on anything new.

And here is what I find every single time. They are losing 10 to 20 hours a week to three things that have nothing to do with actual tax work.

Answering every phone call live. Responding to email the moment it lands. Doing admin or bookkeeping or payroll input that someone else or something else should be handling.

Those are not workload problems. They are habit problems. Get an answering service. Batch your email. Stop doing $10 to $100 an hour work when AI and delegation can cover it. Add all of that up and a 40 hour week during tax season is not a stretch. It is just what happens when the work is organized correctly.

What is the one thing on that list that is costing you the most time right now? Drop it in the comments.