Why Outsourcing Income Tax Returns Makes Sense for Your Firm?

Income tax returns. Three words. But they aren’t just three words; these are essentially the lifeblood of accounting firms. What happens when tax season kicks in, in earnest. A feeling of being overwhelmed runs through the firm, wherein there is too much work and too little time to do it in. Taxes preparation and filing is the bread and butter of many accounting firms in Canada, but this doesn’t mean everyone can manage the process of income tax and benefit return seamlessly.

For many, it’s a scramble, and at the end of the tax season, they are left wondering, “did we do enough” “could we have done more.” This is where they start thinking about whether outsourcing income tax return to Canada would have been a good idea.

The simple answer here is yes. If you outsource income tax returns, it brings a lot of benefits to the table.

So let’s take a closer look at the reasons why it makes sense for you to outsource income tax returns:

1. Cost-Benefit

When you outsource income tax return preparation to a firm specializing in Canadian tax and legislation, you achieve a cost-saving on each tax prepared. This saving can be up to 50%, which is not bad. This is essentially money gained, which can be invested in other business growth activities. What’s more, in an economic scenario wherein accounting firms face a downward price pressure, clients are making more demands. Firms are being forced not to increase the pricing. Therefore, it makes sense to save money on tax preparation.

Building cost efficiency helps you earn more money per income tax preparation, and if needed, you can pass on some of this savings benefit to your clients. In a post-pandemic world, wherein businesses are just getting back onto their feet, saving money (and still getting the job done) is uppermost on people’s minds. Passing on a part of the tax preparation discount to your clients is just one of the many ways of keeping them happy.

Also, another huge benefit of saving money and passing on this benefit to the client is that they will be more accepting of outsourcing as a model of income tax return filing.

2. Capacity Building in a Busy Season

There are two considerations here. First, you build capacity before the busyness of the tax season kicks into action, or you add to your team strengthen through the tax season. In both cases, things might not go according to plan. Your firm might not get access to the right talent when needed because tax professionals are in really short supply in the busy tax season. Doing it much before the tax season sets in is a good idea, but remember that you are trying to build capacity only for the tax season. What you are looking for is seasonal staff and many a time such a staff is difficult to find.

On the other hand, things worsen if you are searching for additions to your tax preparation staff when the season is on. Tax professionals are in short supply, irrespective of the money you are willing to shell out. In such cases, you might be left scrambling to get work done. Think of a horror scenario wherein you take up more work, thinking you will add to the tax team you have currently, but you cannot. What happens then. If you tell your clients you won’t be able to manage the work you have taken up, it will be loss of face and a tremendous loss of reputation.

The solution to such problems lies in outsourcing income tax return preparation. If you outsource income tax returns, you can scale your firm quickly. The offshore tax professionals will act as an extension of your in-house team, allowing you to get more work done. What’s more, you can reduce your offshore team in the lean season.

There is also a cost-benefit here. You can scale your team without incurring the costs of hiring an in-house employee and the fees you will incur while searching for tax professionals. CPA firms have managed to make the most of flexible scalability to experience substantial cost savings.

3. Time-Saving

Another considerable advantage of outsourcing income tax and benefit return is that you are freeing up a lot of time. This can be spent in other revenue generation activities. It is important to note that a perennial shortage of time adversely impacts the growth prospects of any firm. If your firm’s time is caught up in low-margin, time-consuming accounting tasks, how do you focus on the high revenue services? These services include tax advisory, financial planning and more.

This is why you need to outsource. If your firm decides to outsource income tax return Canada, it saves time even in the busy tax season. Invest this time in exploring other services that can be added to your firm. A mix of services helps build resilience for your firm.  As this expands the scope of your firm.

There is another element associated with saving time. You can spend time thinking about how best you retain your existing customers. We live in a world of personalization, and your client expects you to engage with them, know about their needs and demands, and fulfil their expectations. It could be something as basic as keeping them apprised of the income tax return filing progress. Or it could be identifying some tax-saving avenue that they hadn’t been leveraging.

These look like small interventions, but these go a long way in establishing a solid client connect built on the back of small yet satisfactory customer experiences.

4. Get More Work Done

If your income tax return outsourcing services provider delivers quick turnaround times, there is nothing better. Because this means you can get more work done. So there is no problem if you take up more work from clients and pass it on to your outsourcing provider. Your strict SLAs ensure work will be delivered quickly and within the pre-determined deadlines.

If the busy tax season is when your firm does the most business, it makes sense to take up as much work as possible. In the ordinary course of events, you will be restricted by the productivity limitations of your staff. But if you outsource income tax return preparation, you are sorted. Take up as much work, which comes your way. This will have an impact on your firm’s profitability.

Conclusion

The decision to outsource income tax return filing is a good one because this ensures you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. But, you mustn’t work with just any tax preparation outsourcing services provider, but someone with a good reputation with Canada tax return outsourcing. So do your research and get started on outsourcing income tax returns.