Is Filing for Taxes in 2021 Going to Be Harder?

What factors affect the tax filing process? Normally, it would be something about your annual income, any side jobs you had, the expenses you incurred, and whether or not you got married during the year.

But because of the pandemic, more factors will come into play when you finally file your income taxes next year. Things like unemployment benefits, stimulus checks, changed jobs, and moving to a different state can have a positive or negative impact on your taxes, depending on what category you fall under according to your accountant or tax preparer.

This is why tax preparers have a huge role to play in making sure individuals and corporations file the right taxes. There are a lot of changes in the tax code, especially since there are tax breaks for small businesses and tax exemptions for individual taxpayers. Tax preparers have to keep up with all of these updates, so they might find more than their usual clients lining up for their services. Even people who usually file taxes on their own will need help from tax experts. This will ensure that they maximize all kinds of exemptions they can avail.

Times Have Changed

No longer are people so against the idea of paying for someone to prepare their taxes for them. Over time, they realized how effective this strategy is and how much time and money they save by letting a professional handle their income taxes. Surveys showed that individual taxpayers save more on taxes when they let a professional file their taxes for them than when they try to handle it on their own. This is why there is now a huge market for accountants, bookkeepers, and tax preparers.

You can cast a wide net, and you will still be able to catch a handful of potential clients who will trust you with their money. However, to target a specific audience, you also need to modernize your wares. Old marketing techniques and tools will not work anymore.

Programs, Apps, Software

Tax preparers will need modern “warfare,” so to speak. Among these is tax software that will encode the income and expenses of the taxpayer. But before you subscribe to any tax software, make sure to check a comparison chart of tax software so that you will know the different features that you can get for the amount that you’re going to pay. The software will make the job of a tax preparer easier because all you need to do is input the required details. The program will develop the best strategy so the clients can make the most out of the exemptions provided by the tax laws.

But making sense of the data collected by the software is a job for a tax preparer only. Some clients think that all tax preparers do is to input the amounts and file the taxes in the proper office. This isn’t true. The job of a tax preparer is more than about encoding data. It is about analyzing the given data, understanding how to apply the tax policies, and giving clients the best strategy to maximize their tax refunds.

Why the Pandemic Matters

To help taxpayers and businesses during the pandemic, the government passed several laws to minimize their payables for the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years. These laws intend to lighten the burden on the taxpayers who are struggling with unemployment, credit card debts, mortgages, student loans, and many others. Businesses, too, have been suffering the most since many of them have to seize operations during the start of the pandemic. A lot of them have been unable to rise from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

People and businesses are struggling and simply trying to survive. They do not have the money to spare for their tax payables, so they are looking for a way to reduce their taxes. For that to be possible, they need all the help they can get from their tax preparers and accountants. They need to be circumspect of the way they earn and spend.

Filing taxes for 2021 will be different because of the things that happened in the past 18 months. But although people and businesses are barely surviving, it is also true that they still need to be responsible with their taxes. That’s what tax preparers are for. They work to understand the many nuances of the tax system and how this can be used for the benefit of their clients. More than anything else, this is critical in a year when millions of people have lost their jobs and savings.