Dear friend & client, welcome to another tax season!  Hopefully less complicated that the previous 2 years!

First let us thank you for the referrals you have given us!  Unfortunately, we have reached our capacity and additional clients will restrict our ability to provide quality and timely services to our existing clients.  Hopefully with the addition of some new staff, we will be able to start taking in new clients next year.

As before, we prefer that you drop off your documents and we will notify you when they are ready to be picked up. Scheduled appointments are reserved to discuss questions or unique changes to your finances, but most of the time we can answer them when you drop things off to us.

We have installed a new secure drop box to the left of our door for after hours.  Your envelopes are fed through the wall and are stored in a secured area until we retrieve them in the morning.

You can mail your documents to us, and also use our secure portal to send them electronically. Please do not send electronic copies by email!  Although our system is secure, email can be the weakest link that may expose you to data and identity theft, since we have no control of the service you use to send them.  If you want to use the secure portal, please send us an email message and I will forward a link for you to use.

To help you organize, we have a few checklists on our website:

https://pbs.tax/blog/2017/12/appointment-checklist/

This year we will be experimenting with offering a choice of electronic delivery of your tax forms instead of paper forms and folders.  Please let us know in advance if this is your preference.  (We will be using the same encrypted secure portal)

We accept payment by cash, check, credit card, and this year we will accept electronic payments through the Venmo app.  If you wish to pay with Venmo, let us know and we will supply you with our address/identity.

We are encouraging every client to get an IRS identity protection pin number, which will protect you from a criminal filing a fraudulent return using your identity.  In the past, the IRS would only issue a pin number if someone actually experienced identity theft.  Now they will allow ANY taxpayer to apply for one.  It can be done here:

www.irs.gov/identity-theft-fraud-scams/get-an-identity-protection-pin

Note: the application will be for the 2023 tax year, as pin numbers for the 2022 tax year were already issued in December.

Finally, we have struggled with the decision about raising our processing fees.  With today’s inflation rate it is nearly impossible not to have an increase, just to keep up and break even.  Our fees will generally increase by $15 compared to last year.

Sincerely,

Tim & Chris Bright

(and Emilee)