How Accountants Can Help their Clients with Sales Tax
If you’re a CPA or other accounting profession and want to start offering sales tax services in addition to what you currently offer to your clients, getting the right kind of training is necessary for you to be able to provide the best kind of service you can possibly give. On the flip side of the coin, if you already have a ton on your plate and don’t want to be the one offering this service yourself, you would need someone with the know-how who can provide your clients with the right service fit for their needs.
Michael is the founder of Sales Tax and More and is one of the country's leading authorities on sales tax issues such as consulting and research, registrations, returns, nexus, drop-shipping, eCommerce, and service providers. He is a writer, speaker, and regularly presents on webinars, and he also hosts his own podcast where he shares his wisdom and learnings to his audience in order to help them navigate the tricky world of taxes.
Ellie Moffat, Michael’s new co-host on his podcast show, is the head of marketing at Sales Tax And More. She is an experienced marketer with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Ellie graduated from Brigham Young University - Idaho and is highly skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), photography, social media consulting, graphic design, and social media ROI.
In this episode, Michael starts out by introducing his new co-host Ellie Moffat. They then talk about how Sales Tax and More helps CPAs who want to offer sales tax services to their clients, the type of training they have for CPAs and other accounting professionals, and what we should expect in the coming weeks on this podcast.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Introducing the show's new co-host, Ellie Moffat
How Michael helps CPAs with limited knowledge of sales tax
How CPAs can learn more about sales tax and the types of training that Michael’s company can offer
What's coming up on the Sales Tax and More Podcast
How Michael's company works with CPAs behind the scenes
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Connect with Michael and Ellie
Sponsor for This Episode
Sales Tax and More assists companies and their trusted advisors like CPAs with sales tax needs. They offer consulting and research, registrations, returns, and so much more. Over the years they have assisted thousands of sellers both foreign and domestic with their tax issues in the United States and in Canada.
Episode Transcript - Audio Version
[0:10] Intro: Welcome to Sales Tax and More, your go-to resource for all things state tax-related. Now, here's your host, Michael Fleming.
[0:26] Mike: Hi, I'm Mike Fleming, the president of Sales Tax and More. And today's co-host of the Sales Tax and More Podcast. We've got Ellie Moffat joining us today she's going to be a regular going forward. She's going to be a co-host of this podcast as well as our marketing manager. So, Ellie, you want to jump on?
[0:48] Ellie: Yeah, Mike. I'm really excited to be here. I'm really excited to co-host this podcast. We have a lot of great things in store for everyone. So on this podcast, we talked about everyone's favorite topic, sales tax. At Sales Tax and More we do a lot of registration, returns, research, and like our name states more. So if you have questions about our services, if you want to get in touch with us, please visit our website at salestaxandmore.com. And reach out to us and we'll get back to you. So, Mike, like I said, I'm super excited to be here. Today, we're going to talk about how we can help accountants help their clients. So let's just jump right in here. So, Mike, you have a lot of experience working with CPAs. And we've been talking to a lot of them and a large number of them seem to be saying that they either have no knowledge or limited knowledge of sales tax. So we know that clients have potential exposure, how do we respond to those CPAs who are talking to this and wanting to know how they can help their clients?
[1:51] Mike: Yeah, and this is a great question, Ellie, I'm hearing the same things when I'm speaking to our clients and potential clients out there. And our accounting partners. So I usually answer with a question. And that question is, you know, how much do you want to learn about sales tax? I mean, there are some accountants out there who have so much on their plates, they don't really want to start offering sales tax services. So if you want to start offering sales tax services, we're going to go in a different direction. But if you just want to make sure that your clients are taking care of it, they're not talking to someone else. Because once they start talking to someone else about sales tax, they may start talking about other areas of the business that you don't want to give up. So you want to have a good solid partner out there that doesn't compete with you that knows what they're talking about. And in this type of relationship, I look at it as you know, a family care physician. You know, like accounting professionals, family care, physicians have usually trusted advisors. But they don't have to know anything, excuse me, they do have to know something, they don't have to know everything. You know, they just have to know where there potentially may be an issue so they perform their tests or everything else. And if they think there's a problem, and they're gonna refer you out to a specialist, and in this case, someone like Sales Tax and More is the specialist. So, to start out with, you're gonna want to know buzzwords, you're gonna want to know certain, you know, issues that may be problems for your clients. And we've got a lot of free webinars out there where we go into these types of issues, where you don't have to be an expert. You just pick up the buzzwords and you know what you need to be looking for and if these things are apparent, for example, you have a client Selling into multiple states. Now that Wayfair is a reality. Anyone who's selling it to multiple states has potential problems. So you've got to ask them what they're doing to protect themselves with all these new laws out there. And if they say nothing, then you say, well, I want you to talk to these guys over here. So again, it's just more of a referral-type process. And that's if you don't want to learn a whole lot more about sales tax. You know, again, watch a couple of webinars, get the concepts down, and we'll work with you in helping you to protect your clients, which in turn, protects you.
[4:42] Ellie: Mike, this is really great advice, especially for those accountants as accounting professionals whose plate there, they often have full plates, right. They need to turn to the expertise of other people around them. But what about those accountants who want to start learning for themselves? If they want to, they want to find the resources out there. What can they do?
[5:03] Mike: Yeah, and this is a great time to be in sales tax. And again, there are quite a number of services out there that accountants can offer where, you know, when when I say accountants, you know, CPAs, other accounting professionals, bookkeepers, there are services that can be offered by anyone in the accounting field. Without having real, real deep knowledge. I mean, you can learn as you're going along and start offering more complicated services. But start out, nexus is fairly simple. And we offer a lot of tools. We have a premium portion of our website, we offer a lot of tools that we can use in nexus reviews. As part of that website, we offer workshops, so we've got a two-hour workshop coming up at the end of February that says…that teachers you or anyone who wants to learn how to do a nexus review or a nexus study for either yourself or for your clients, and we'll teach it from an economic basis, we'll teach it from a physical presence basis, we'll cover all the hot points in there and provide you with the nexus questionnaires and the spreadsheet format that we use in our own practice. When we're offering this, we'll talk about pricing and what the range is. So we're not the only one out there offering services like this, but we think that we've got one of the best comprehensive offerings. And, you know, you dip your toe in the water, I mean, you know, so, generally, we say it all starts with nexus. Because if your clients don't have nexus, then they don't have a responsibility to do anything. But if they do have nexus, then they may have a responsibility to collect and remit tax. We’ll cover not only sales tax nexus, how to do a review or study for that, but we'll also talk about income tax nexus. And you know, every month, we're going to have a new two-hour workshop and by the way, these workshops provide for 2 CPEs. So you can, you know, get your CPE credit while you're learning new skills. So, again, there are lots of other people offering courses out there to teach CPAs or, or others on how to do this. We just think we're the best at it.
[7:41] Ellie: We do think we're the best and to add a little bit to that plug there. You know, the feedback we've received on the premium portion of our website is phenomenal. People say that we're becoming their go-to online resource for the information that they need. Mike, you covered a lot of things. hear about what people can do to utilize, utilize and implement their education when it comes to sales tax. Is there anything else that you would add here? Is there anything else coming up? I know, again, you covered a little bit of it. But what else can we do?
[8:17] Mike: Continue listening to this podcast because we've got some great, interviews coming up. So people who offer different types of sales tax technology, and we're going to be talking about that on this podcast, we're going to be talking about things that may not be directly aligned with sales tax, but are important to your clients who are selling into multiple states or into multiple countries. So on this podcast alone, we're going to be bringing you a lot of information. And then once you start getting used to it, you know, there are lots of webinars out there, as I mentioned. Ellie, how many free webinars do we do right now that provide for CPE credit is we do?
[9:03] Ellie: Yeah, we do between 8 and 10. Those are all rotating. So a lot of people have come to the webinar. We always have phenomenal feedback. And, Mike, we love working with CPAs and accounting professionals. You guys are a great group. And we love We love being in contact with you.
[9:22] Mike: Absolutely. So you know, we've got these free webinars, and then we've got this series of workshops coming out. We've got these podcasts where we're going to be inviting experts from all different fields to talk about topics that we think are going to be important to you. And they're very there are a lot of other people out there who are offering free webinars. So if this is something you really want to start offering services on, learn from as many people as you possibly can. We all may say something a little bit differently and it may stick there. We will eventually be coming out with some of these workshops that talk about exemption certificates and how to offer validation services, which is something that, you know, a lot of people are a little bit afraid of, you know, reviewing exemption certificates or resale certificates. But we'll teach you how to do it will give you the tools that you can rely on to see if something is actually acceptable in the state where the delivery is being made and where your client has a responsibility to collect the certificates. And by the way, this is for any accounting professionals in the industry, as well as in public practice. So lots and lots of tools out there. You know, as we talk to some of these technology companies, they're going to share with you a number of the tools that they have available. And I'm just excited about what we've got coming up in future weeks here.
[11:07] Ellie: I am too Mike and I appreciate everyone for listening in here. It's been really fun to be part of this podcast and very excited to continue to be a part of it moving forward and Mike do you have anything else you want to say finishing up?
[11:22] Mike: No, we currently work with a lot of CPAs out there and a number of different ways. Sometimes we're behind the scenes. And clients don't know about us. Sometimes we're standing side by side and we're the subject matter experts. And sometimes, you know, we're just a great referral partner because you either don't want to become involved in the offering sales tech services or something may have too much hair on it, and you'd rather just let someone else handle all of the exposure. So we hope that we can help you out and whether you decide to work with us or not. We can help you get started. on this journey, of knowledge gathering in order to provide your own services. So, thank you, everyone.
[12:08] Ellie: Thank you, everyone.
[12:10] Outro: Thanks for listening. Be sure to click subscribe and check out all of the resources we have out on the web.