As is true for many local Certified Public Accounting firms, tax return preparation is the largest part of our practice. And, like other local firms, our small-firm culture has enabled us to maintain beneficial relationships with numerous clients since the firm's inception over twenty years ago. The similarities between our tax return preparation practice and that practice at many other local accounting firms end at that point, however.
A disproportionately large part of the typical local accounting firm's practice involves preparation of relatively uncomplicated tax returns. We believe that type of tax return preparation practice has come to more closely resemble the sale of a commodity than a professional service, however, so we prepare relatively few returns of that nature. Instead, our tax return preparation is almost exclusively limited to complex income tax returns for business entities and their owners.
Our quality focus for our tax return preparation practice is also quite different from that at some other local accounting firms. Many firms seem to believe that the tax return preparation process cannot provide independent value for clients, so they focus on achieving low-cost, assembly-line-like return preparation. Our experience, on the other hand, is that an informed and innovative approach to tax return preparation often produces an improved financial result. So we emphasize the capabilities and training of our tax return preparation personnel and the quality of the resources available to them.
All of the members of the Dawson & Gerbic, LLP tax return preparation team are highly-trained and experienced. Becky Meehan, who heads that function, graduated magna cum laude from her Eastern Washington University undergraduate Accounting program, and she graduated with honors from her University of Washington Master of Professional Accounting in Taxation program.
Pat Ackerman and Eva Leung, our firm's other managers, assist Becky in supervising the firm's income tax return preparation engagements. During the last five years all three of them have completed a major professional certification program aimed at expanding their return preparation competencies. In response to our increased services for distressed businesses, Becky and Eva became Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors; and Pat earned a Certificate in Gerontology from the University of Washington in order to better understand the needs of our clients' aging owners. Pat completed that program with nearly perfect grades. As a group, our managers average nearly twenty years experience in public accounting.
Each of the senior and staff accountants who prepare tax returns in our firm hold two Masters degrees, including a recent Master of Professional Accounting degree from the University of Washington.
To augment our academic training and to provide access to the most current and complete U.S. income tax information, we subscribe to RIA's Analysis of Federal Taxes - Income, RIA's Checkpoint internet income tax reporter service, the CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter, the BNA Tax Management Portfolios, the NYU Institute on Federal Taxation, and half-a-dozen current tax-related magazines. In addition, we have shelves of treatises and texts on specific tax topics from a dozen publishers.
For our mechanical processing of income tax returns, we utilize the internet version of GoSystem Tax RS, a processing system described in the April/May 2006 edition of The CPA Technology Advisor as "... at the pinnacle of tax preparation systems, providing a comprehensive online solution that spans the compliance spectrum and provides exceptional integration with RIA's renowned research products." We suspect that GoSystem may have provided the magazine with that language; however, we also believe that it's true.
