John M. Hoffman & Associates CPAs

Info about the Firm

Services that we provide:

Individual Income Tax Planning and Preparation is a large part of the services we provide. You can rest assured that your tax work will be prepared right here in the United States and not shipped to a third world country for processing. We have been doing this for years and have an efficient yet effective system down.

Our tax preparation process starts with the tax organizer / questionnaire. For existing clients, our software generates a custom package that helps our clients to organizer their materials. All of the pertinent carryover data from date of birth or names of children to bank account interest is reflected. This prompts our clients to update critical materials as well as to provide current year data. Organizer packagers also include check lists, tax news, and other materials. Our tax organizers are mailed in early January of each year.

Prospective clients should you want to download a "generic" tax organizer click on the link.

Documents that we request are requested for reason. We really do prefer to get the originals (rather than copies) of these materials. We do return them and it is simply easier for us to work with. In the last two years, two of our clients provided the real estate tax bills as requested and we noted that they had not filed for residential exemptions. We pointed this out, they remedied this and enjoy indefinite annual tax savings of approximately $1,000 each.

It is up to the client as to the degree to which they use the package. The more they use it, the more effective and efficient. Likewise, it is up to the client as to how they get the materials to us. Some like to meet in person while others mail the package to us and some prefer to simply drop it off at the front desk. The choice is the clients.

We use the most sophisticated tax software in our profession, CCH pro-system fx. A client's tax data is entered into this software by one of our tax professionals. For example, if a person meets with John, John will likely be the person to enter all of the data into the software.

A draft copy of the tax return is printed and an independent professional within our team will review the return. The detailed review includes cross referencing every item on the tax return to every piece of data the client provided. This also includes pointed out suggestions for the client (for example does the client want to contribute to an IRA or does the client have auto excise tax to deduct).

All along the way the client is contacted with questions that may come up. As the questions may come up more than once (in spite of our efforts to be efficient) we prefer e-mail as the best way to reach our clients with tax questions. That way the client is not upset by us asking the question at 5:00 in the morning and we are not upset by them answering it at 11:00 at night.

Delivery of the tax return varies by client. Some wish to have the tax return emailed as a secure pdf. Others prefer the pdf to be copied to a CD and mailed. We send many via U.S. mail, and some prefer to pick up the return. We return all of the client data as we do not store any of the backup materials.

Once the client gets the return, there are occasionally questions. We of course do not mind. We do hope that the client took the time to look over the entire package before asking questions, simply out of that efficiency model. We try to provide a year to year comparison. Often times this answers the age old question of why did my taxes go up (answer: your income went up).

If there are problems with the tax return, we stand behind our work. Errors that are our fault are corrected for no additional fee. After the fact changes or additional information from client changes are billed at our standard rates.

We encourage our clients to ask us questions during the year. This allows us to anticipate and plan around transactions which is much better than trying to mop up a problem after the fact.