The Daily Standard
Story Archive
Financial adviser Alan Wolters works at his desk at Moorman, Harting & Co. in Celina on Thursday afternoon.
CELINA - This tax season, the Internal Revenue Service expects 140 million people to file returns by April 15. Luckily, dozens of certified public accountants at Moorman, Harting & Co. are ready to help tax-paying Americans with the daunting process.
Randy Kaup, a CPA, managing partner and financial adviser at the Moorman, Harting Coldwater branch, has been with the company since 2006.
He said tax season, the time between late January and April 15, lends itself to long days - as long as 13- to 14-hour days. CPAs, like him, can have several hundred business and individual clients, and each CPA at the firm typically signs 300-400 tax returns per year.
Although the season usually starts in January, Kaup said farmers and agricultural clients come in between November and December for planning meetings to get an idea of what their income will look like for the year or if they need to spend any money to try to lower their tax liability.
"For farmers, they can do things like pre-pay seed, feed or chemicals," Kaup said. "They can also go out and buy a piece of equipment, whether it would be a tractor or a planter. The big thing is they don't want to come in during tax season and have a surprise. It's just trying to manage what their tax liability is going to be for the year. A big part of tax planning for us is trying to keep their income fairly consistent from year to year so that they don't go into a different tax bracket."
January can be slow for Kaup because tax documents aren't ready, but from February until April, he is slammed.
"I have appointments all day basically, meeting with farmers (and business owners) and we go through their tax information. It's a long day. We get here early in the morning and are usually here until later in the evening, so you're talking usually 13- or 14-hour days."
Kaup said easier returns take 45 minutes to an hour, while more complicated farm returns can take 3-5 hours.
Because tax laws can change quite a bit from year to year, Kaup and his colleagues undergo training to ensure they understand what the new laws dictate.
"There's a lot of calculations and different things that go into preparing a tax return behind the scenes that may not be apparent to somebody, as far as different deductions and things that are available," Kaup said. "It's not just keying numbers in and the system spits it out, there's a lot of extra analysis that goes into that, looking for tax-saving ideas."
Some of that analysis includes looking at tax brackets, taxable income, things that can be done to lower a client's tax or contributing to individual retirement accounts or health saving accounts.
Kaup said there were no tax law changes from 2023 to 2024, but the current tax law expires at the end of 2025, meaning President Donald Trump and Congress will "work on some new tax laws here in 2025, and so there's likely going to be some changes coming."
"If they don't renew the current rules, the tax rates in each tax bracket are going to increase," Kaup said of what those changes could look like. "They also changed the Child Tax Credit, they're going to put personal independent exemptions back in the law, (and) they could do away with the qualified business income deduction."
Moorman, Harting & Co. has officess in Celina, Coldwater and Maria Stein.
Also different this year, the IRS expanded a program that allows people to file their taxes directly with the agency for free.
The federal Direct File program, which permits taxpayers to calculate and submit their returns without using commercial tax preparation software, is now available to taxpayers in 25 states, up from 12 states that were part of last year's pilot program. (Ohio and Indiana are not participating states this year.)
The program allows people in some states with very simple W-2s to calculate and submit their returns directly to the IRS. Those using the pilot program in 2024 claimed more than $90 million in refunds, the IRS said in October.
Kaup advised taxpayers to keep detailed, organized records.
"Whenever they receive tax documents, keep them all together in a file," he said. "If they own a business, it's important to keep good records of their income and expenses. We don't like to get a pile of receipts. We just want to know if they have it summarized by category; that's very helpful."
Although being audited is a legitimate fear, Kaup said the audit rates in the last five years have been pretty low.
"In general, we tell people to report all their income and then we claim all the legitimate tax deductions that they have - we try to help them save as much tax using all the tools that are in the tax code that they can use," he said. "There is a lot of talk about people not reporting all their income, but in general, I think as long as you report all your income and report legitimate deductions, you don't have anything to fear about an audit."
- The Associated Press contributed to this article.
