With the 2022 tax season nearly here and the number of changes to tax legislation seen over the past few months, year-end tax planning and communication is in full swing. You may already be feeling overwhelmed with the wide range of issues potentially affecting your clients, especially if your client base grew this year.
With success and a more diverse client base, there is a greater chance of unique risks and opportunities going unnoticed. The flip side of this hazard is the prospect of engaging more frequently with your clients, leading to additional revenue-generating engagements or (at the very least) improved client experience.
With the tax and accounting industry changes, tax professionals need to build advisory platforms that promote partnership with loyal clients, rather than maintaining the traditional, transactional relationships falling out of favor in a commoditized market. Advisory services are a chance to provide value to your clients before, during, and after tax season – which supports the fee or subscription-based revenue model that so many firms have adopted over the last few years.
The chances are that your firm is already providing both compliance and advisory services. Still, without clear distinctions between these types of services, you may not be appropriately compensated for the value-added services you undertake during your compliance engagements.
When advising your clients for the upcoming tax season, it is crucial to leverage content, tools, and data designed to aid your advisory services. A robust predictive analytics platform is your key to success in this arena – one that combines thorough analysis with prescient client data that creates a springboard into every advisory opportunity – at both the federal and state level.
Leverage firm-level predictive analytics to increase client engagement and automate marketing efforts
One of the main draws of cloud computing is its ability easily to integrate a wide variety of technology frameworks against large amounts of data. For the tax and accounting space, one of the most promising of these frameworks, predictive analytics, allows firms to analyze historical tax returns in the context of current events. This empowers smart decision-making both for the firm and its clients.
One such application, CCH Axcess iQ, uses predictive analytics to provide you with a list of clients likely to be impacted by major federal and state tax legislation potentially impacting your clients. When an important tax event occurs or a planning opportunity is identified, CCH iQ provides detailed analyses of each issue – written by Wolters Kluwer CPAs and tax experts – and queries that automatically search your CCH Axcess database to identify potentially impacted clients. This content and data, with accompanying client letters that can be utilized as-is to explain the potential impact and streamline the process of engaging your clients about legislative changes and planning opportunities.
Predicting client impact for major tax legislation saves time and generates interest in your services among those clients who have something to gain or lose in the legislation.
Streamline individual client predictive workflows for better client tax planning
For those times when you need quick insight into the issues that impact a single client, predictive intelligence makes it easy to provide the best advice. For instance, when meeting with “high touch” clients, the number of tax events that may be important to discuss may be significant, increasing the chance that something important will slip through the cracks.
Or, perhaps new legislation at the state level has been announced that applies only to a sliver of your client base. Even if you aren’t familiar with the provisions of the legislation, or you aren’t 100% sure if your client may be affected, being notified of the possibility is a huge win.
In cases like these, viewing the iQ events pane in the Client Dashboard can help you get up to speed on state events like these. Understanding the impact to the client and the changes they should make in response requires minimal effort and provides the next level of customer service that your clients demand.
Gazing into your crystal ball will set up your next planning meeting to make a lasting impression for your clients who expect you to have all their bases covered. Instead of devoting endless hours of administrative tasks and speculative research, focus on work that adds significant value to your services and your clients’ sense of being truly cared-for.
