Read The Transcript Here:

Steven Jarvis, CPA (00:51)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services Podcast, Financial Professionals Edition. I’m your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and I’m very excited for this week’s conversation to dive into what it actually looks like to have tax prep in-house for a financial planner. And joining me this week to talk about this is TJ Bruce, financial advisor with Swann Wealth. TJ, welcome to the show.

TJ Bruce (01:16)
Thanks for having me on, Stephen. Appreciate it.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (01:18)
Yeah, absolutely. I love being able to have these conversations and this one I’m particularly excited for because I get a lot of questions from financial advisors of, hey, should I go buy a tax practice? Should I have this in-house? You know, what do my clients expect from me? What’s this gonna look like if I do it? And even though I spend all my time working with advisors and clearly I offer this service to advisors to be able to do tax prep in tandem with them, I also realized that I’m not the only solution and there’s a lot of great possibilities out there. But as we were talking about the show, one of the things that you said that stood out to me, because I feel very much the same way, is that whatever other challenges might come with having tax prep associated with what you’re doing, it’s a huge value add. So TJ, give us a little bit of background as you as a financial advisor and then how you kind of came into the tax prep side of this.

TJ Bruce (01:59)
Yeah, absolutely. So about a year and a half ago, purchased a book of business from financial advisor, solo shop. He was doing financial advising and planning for folks and also did tax prep and started doing tax prep for clients just because he felt or saw the need and the impact for clients, and has been doing it for about 20 some years now. And so when we bought the book of business, you know, it was kind of last minute throw in as like, hey, by the way, like, you we were, do tax prep for clients and do tax returns as well. And to be honest with you, we didn’t really think much of it and kind of overlooked it and thought, you know, maybe we’ll, they’ll help us, you know, pass these tax returns to other CPAs and maybe they can give us some referrals back or something. We’ll offload it slowly but surely. So we really didn’t have any intention to continue doing it and really see a need or fit or value add.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (02:51)
interesting. So really, you were looking to grow your financial planning practice. In your mind, this was, hey, we’re growth through acquisition. We’re going to expand what we’re doing from a planning standpoint and kind of an afterthought of, here’s this tax prep out there. Again, from what we talked about before we hit record, I understand your attitude on that has changed quite a bit.

TJ Bruce (03:09)
Significantly. Yeah, and I will say that before we bought the book of business, we weren’t advisors. We were wholesalers. So we came from the investment world and in the product side of things. And, you know, we, bought the book because we saw their advisors doing, you know, their business and how they run it. And we knew we could offer a better product to clients and a better service. So we didn’t fully kind of encompass of how big of a value add doing tax prep for folks actually is.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (03:36)
So TJ, talk a little bit more about that. what was it, the client reaction where you started seeing, there’s the value here? Was it just your own experience? Like, what did that actually look like in practice that changed your mindset on that?

TJ Bruce (03:46)
Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. So we took over the business in March of 2024. And so we weren’t really a part of the tax prep in that year. As we started meeting with clients, was fascinating. Almost every client that we met with was like, Hey, by the way, you’re going to still do my taxes, right? Like one of you is going to learn how to do tax returns. And it was just, it was crazy how many people told us that. So that was very shocking to hear. And then as you know, fast forward to this tax season that we just had in 2025, like that’s when we really started to realize like how big of a an add-on service, it is for our business.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (04:26)
So TJ talk about just logistically how you went from, I so the person you bought this book of business from had been doing this for 20 years. Did he stay on for this last filing season? You went and hired somebody, you figured this out yourself? Like what does that look like day to day?

TJ Bruce (04:37)
Yeah, good question. He’s staying on for the next couple of years and he’s doing the taxes for, he’s an enrolled agent. So, you know, everything goes through him. My partner and I, we just picked up doing like the data entry this year and going through the process and learning, you know, we can’t learn it all obviously in one season, but scratch the surface and realize how powerful it really is.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (05:01)
Yeah, well, and think that’s part of where this podcast interview came from is I made a post about, where are the advisors who have actually prepared some tax returns? I probably say it a little more aggressively than that. Usually I tell people that if I was in charge of the industry, every advisor would prepare a tax return at some point because it lets you see more of the details of how this stuff actually works. So TJ, as you got in and started doing data entry, started seeing how the tax prep process works, what were some things that stood out?Or what were some things you learned?

TJ Bruce (05:25)
Yeah, for starters, I gained a huge amount respect for CPAs and accountants and everyone a part of the tax season. It’s criminal, you know, the process of… preparing taxes, the deadlines for things are like, it’s so outdated. The 1099 divs and 1099R, they go out maybe early February, maybe mid February. Clients in retirement, they’re only doing like, know, paper. And so they get them in the mail and then week or two goes by, they get around the time to drop them off at the office. And then, you know, next thing you know, it’s middle of March. It’s pretty crazy how extensive the process for filing tax returns really is for CPAs and accountants and their business. And so a lot of credit to them out there.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (06:10)
Yeah, well, I certainly appreciate you sharing that perspective. It’s always, it’s nice to hear it as an expression. It’s nice to hear from someone else when they come in and say, this actually is a lot of work because a lot of times clients think, well, sure, I didn’t get all my documents till the middle of February, but how hard can it be to prepare my tax return between February 15th and April 15th? And what they’re not thinking about is the 500 other clients that we also have to do the work for in that, in that timeframe. So yeah, that perspective is certainly very beneficial to have as you work on tax prep for your own clients going forward and then as you collaborate with other professionals.

TJ Bruce (06:39)
Mm-hmm. And then as you throw in client meetings, drop off their paperwork and chit chat for half hour to an hour. then you kind of got to change gears and go back to data entry or whatever you were doing before. Then your day gets chopped up. Then as you are filing returns, you meet with clients and showing them the income and where their tax rates are at and where they’re going to be. It’s lot jammed into about an eight week span.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (07:08)
Yeah, no, it definitely is. So TJ, having been through a tax filing season, as you look forward, is this like, hey, you’re gonna go become an enrolled agent? Do you think long term you’re gonna try to add people to your team to take care of that? Like what’s the thought process now?

TJ Bruce (08:21)
Yeah, I’m gonna get my enrolled agent this fall Probably October so kind of prep it lead into the season. But yeah, after going through it like definitely gonna stay on it and still still do it for clients in-house here.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (07:31)
Yeah, I mean, that doesn’t surprise me that the client’s first question was, Hey, are gonna still do my taxes? We see that a lot with advisors who come to us and work with us at retirement tech services. advisors, financial professionals of any kind, are more and more hearing from their clients like, Hey, how do I my taxes done? Where do I my taxes? If you start doing taxes, it definitely needs to be a commitment. Because if you let it go, you’re have some really disappointed clients. And I think some of that is just the fact that It is hard to find CPAs and enrolled agents who are taking on clients. I think that eight-week condensed timeframe is certainly a piece of it. Also for your kind of stereotypical financial planning clients, someone who’s approaching retirement or hiring a mid-career professional or someone in retirement, those aren’t the people that CPAs are traditionally trained to seek after. A lot of CPAs are kind of raised on this idea of work with business owners, work on the most complex things. You wanna work with just a handful of really high value clients. And there’s definitely room for that. But when you’re working with these more traditional financial planning clients, there’s gotta be somebody who helps get this stuff done because I’m not very optimistic the IRS is gonna automate it anytime soon.

TJ Bruce (08:36)
Yeah, no, and like you said, people are extremely loyal to their CPA over the years and they’re retiring at a large clip, you know, as just the industry kind of turns over. So it’s pretty fascinating.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (08:48)
TJ, what was the learning process like for you before you got into your first return? Was it all hands on, your business partner said, yep, here’s the software, get in and type some stuff for me, or did you try to do any videos or courses? Like, what was that like for you going into this first season?

TJ Bruce (09:01)
No, yeah, I really regret not doing any homework on it. Just flew into it completely blind. My business partner, we took over for he’s he knows that I’m a doer learner, you know, not a visual learner. So he showed me a little bit around the tool software, watched a few videos on the software and and then just kind of dove into it. One thing is we double check, triple check, quadruple check the return. There were some mistakes, you know, plugging in and putting in the right spot. And it was just a learning curve. Was a long eight weeks for sure, but it was very valuable.

Commercial (09:31)
retirementtaxservices.com/summit

Steven Jarvis, CPA (10:05)
Yeah, there’s so much to be learned from it. And it definitely there’s a big difference. It’s kind of like coaching from the sidelines versus playing the game. There’s a big difference between saying, Oh, yeah, sure. I understand taxes. Here’s how much tax should be withheld on an IRA distribution or here’s in theory how something works. That’s very different than, OK, where does it go in the software? And what about when I come across a different stat I’m not used to. What about when the custodian issues an incorrect 1099 or or an ambiguous 1099 or like, how do I start? Doing these things because I love software and other than when I was in school and like for an assignment where we, it wasn’t actually by hand, but pretty close that we prepared a tax return. Like, I’m very grateful for the software. But it is interesting how it kind of almost limits your creative thinking sometimes of, wait, like I know $10,000 needs to go on this line, but I can’t figure out the box in the software to click to make it show up. And so you almost play this scavenger hunt game at times.

TJ Bruce (11:57)
It is exactly, it’s a kind of a puzzle piece and it’s working a few different areas of your brain at different times and at the same time, you’re late March and you’re kind of coming down to the wire and you got a bunch of meetings stacked up so you got to get done and so yeah, it was a lot of fun to be honest with you and I enjoyed the process in learning learning curve.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (11:16)
TJ, aside from seeing firsthand how valuable this is for your clients and the tax things you learned directly, were there things you learned that helped in the other areas of how you serve your clients and kind of seeing that overlap with other areas of financial planning?

TJ Bruce (11:30)
Yeah, a hundred percent not just for myself, but more so for like the trajectory of our business and how we want to make recommendations and find solutions for folks. One thing that really occurred to me that was that like everyone hates paying taxes. So if they can save a few hundred bucks doing some solution that you offer them, they’re gonna take you up on that.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (11:51)
Yeah, that’s a really big one. I mean, we all know that money is an emotional topic, but taxes is exponentially more so. One of the questions I’ll get sometimes from people is, Steven, how do you talk about taxes all the time and not get political? But what I found in my experience, and I’ve yet to find the exception to this, when I’m talking to individuals, when I’m working with clients, when Bob and Sue are sitting in front of me, it doesn’t matter who they voted for or what their political affiliation is, they want to personally pay less in taxes.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (12:16)
I have clients who would definitely get in a room and disagree very aggressively with each other on how much someone else should pay. But I’m here to serve individuals. I’m here to work with individuals and families to help them on their journey, their financial plan and how the taxes impact that. so, yeah, so that’s what I stay focused on is how do we help somebody pay every dollar they owe but not leave a tip to the IRS. And that negative emotion that can come with paying taxes certainly can be a driving force for helping people to make a plan and then stick with that.

TJ Bruce (12:42)
Totally, everyone’s biggest lifetime expense is taxes. And so how it’s changed our kind of way of doing business and running client meetings is, every client meeting always incorporates taxes of some sort. So we’ll lay out a couple of solutions for folks and we always say like, hey, here’s the tax bill and the tax consequence on that. And here’s how it’s gonna affect the next generation or a spousal or something like that. It’s always playing a part in our meetings.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (13:13)
I like that you’re bringing up how it affects other people as well because especially from the tax professional side, it can be easy to get stuck in, okay, what does this mean for our taxes this year? And every financial decision has a tax impact and we definitely need to understand what that means this year. But if we’re doing really good planning, we’re doing long-term planning. We’re talking about, okay, yes, our tax situation now, but when is this money gonna get used? How is it gonna get used? Who is it gonna get used by? And so understanding the tax ramifications for the client in front of us, as well as what their situation or their errors or beneficiary situation is going to be in the future, that’s where the best tax planning can really happen.

TJ Bruce (13:49)
Totally, we don’t do tax prep for all of our clients, but once we went through the tax season, we realized, hey, we need for the rest of the clients who we don’t do prep for, we need to see their 1040s and we need to take a look at it. And it needs to be incorporated in their meetings and their financial plan. So that was a big eye opener.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (14:07)
TJ, that was gonna be one of my questions was before this acquisition, how often were you reviewing tax returns for clients?

TJ Bruce (14:14)
Not at all. Yeah, so it wasn’t a piece, wasn’t a big focus for us. Like I said, we’re only a and a half in, but it was a great time to learn that part.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (14:20)
Yeah, well, I mean, for people listening, if you aren’t getting returns for any of your clients or for all of your clients, now’s the time to level this up. So you can go through TJ’s experience and do the tax returns yourself. I’m a huge advocate for that. If you don’t have that opportunity, though, I mean, learn from other advisors who are doing this stuff. It’s such a huge value add for your clients. And TJ, I love that you’ve made that commitment now, this is too valuable of a piece to ignore. So now we’re going to get the tax returns. We’re going to make sure that we’re incorporating into the process. And that was only a year and a half ago. And so again, for people listening, if you’re sitting there thinking, that’s really big change to make, it is, but it’s worth it. And it’s totally doable. You gotta get your hands dirty. You gotta get into these returns and start learning how they work.

TJ Bruce (15:00)
W2hich is a tall task, definitely worth it in the long run.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (15:04)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I probably don’t do as good a job as I should sometimes of reinforcing the tax planning and tax preparation both. If you want to get involved in taxes, it takes hard work, right? There are efficient ways to do this. That’s why we offer resources and memberships for advisors to help them along their way. But at end of the day, it still takes work. You still have to understand how this works. You still have to go through tax returns, understand what line items are most applicable to your clients. That is one way that you can narrow down and not make it quite so daunting is don’t look at the 80,000 pages of the tax code and say crap, I have to learn all of that. It’s okay. What does my typical client work with? And let’s ignore everything else.

TJ Bruce (15:38)
Mm-hmm exactly and you know we don’t really focus or claim to be these this tax expert. We’re We outsource a couple of returns, a couple of business dollar returns to larger accountants in CPA shops just because we want to focus on everyday retirees or everyday W-2 employees. And that’s kind of our realm and we’re not going to try to be someone else when it comes to tax prep. So we’re aware of our restrictions or limitations.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (16:09)
Yeah. TJ, I love that you brought that point up because it seems especially prevalent in the tax world or maybe I just think that’s the world I’m in. But it can feel like, hey, I’ve got to be all things to all people. And it turns out as long as you’re clear with your clients, people understand that you’re not an expert in everything. So we do the same thing at Retirement Tax Services. Here’s the clients we work really well with. And when someone comes along that I was just talking to a potential new client last week and they have dual citizenship. And so one of the things we talked about is, are you filing taxes in other countries? Because if you are, we’re just not the right fit. And for this potential client, they’re only filing in the US, great, I can do that for days, but that’s an area where you want somebody who’s an expert in it. But my bigger point there is for advisors who are trying to get more into tax prep or tax planning, it’s okay to start small. If you say, hey, we’re gonna help you with taxes, you just need to be clear on what that means. And clients will respect that as long as there aren’t surprises. So start small and build. Don’t feel like you gotta come out of the gate being able to do all the things.

TJ Bruce (17:09)
Yeah, exactly. It’s a large task and it’s tough and it’s difficult. Like you said, 70,000 pages of the IRS tax code. That’s something you don’t learn overnight. So we stick in our lane and it works very well.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (17:21)
Well, and by the time you learn it, they’re gonna change it on you anyway, so there’s probably no point in learning the whole thing. TJ, let’s get really tactical here for a minute. From a business model standpoint, you mentioned that you aren’t doing taxes for all of your clients, but what percent of the clients that you’re doing tax returns for are you doing other work for as well. And is the tax prep a separate fee or is that just included in what you do for clients?

TJ Bruce (17:45)
Yeah, the tax prep is a separate fee. What we do is we have about 75 households. And I think this year we did about 62 returns. And a lot of those are you know, clients kids returns who are fresh out of college and you know, they’re just getting their start. So, or maybe it’s like, you know, grandpa’s grandma’s of clients in. So there’s, there’s a good chunk of households that we work with who just use other their, their CPA that they’ve been working with for a very long time. And yeah, we’re, okay with that. We okay, we say, Hey, we’re here for you. If you, you know, if your CPA retires or whatever goes on next stage of their life, that’s fine, and we can be happy to take over or take a look and see if we can do that otherwise we’ll outsource it to a different firm.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (18:21)
Yeah, that’s really interesting. Have you started using tax prep in your marketing efforts? Have you seen a difference from prospects as well? Or at this point, is it more focused on continuing the service to existing clients?

TJ Bruce (18:31)
Yeah, know with with prospects we always tell them and there’s been a couple that it’s like a huge light bulb for them like you do tax prep to like a one-stop shop. That’s that’s perfect. So that’s I’m not gonna say it’s one over the prospect, but it was definitely a great value add just to throw in and say hey, you know, we do this too, and that goes along with you know, financial plan. That’s how we incorporated

Steven Jarvis, CPA (18:55)
Yeah, it’s an interesting one. And one of the reasons I think it’s so powerful for prospects and for clients as far as how they measure the value of the advisor they work with, everyone knows they have to file a tax return. And so it’s not something people are going to get excited about. It’s not really something people want to spend a lot of time on, but they know it needs to be taken care of. And so the idea that somebody who is already involved in the rest of their financial life is also going to take care of that thing they don’t really want to deal with is just a huge bonus. And then we all know being on the professional side of it. There’s just so much overlap that it’s tough to get it done right if you don’t have a really proactive collaborative relationship between the financial professional and the tax professional. If that’s under one roof, that can work out great as well. But there’s got to be some level of overlap or it’s just not going to consistently get done right.

TJ Bruce (19:37)
Especially when you’re in the tax world, you have deadlines. In the financial world, you have deadlines. So December 31st or April 15th. And that comes down to the wire sometimes. And you need to have large discussions. It’s just not possible sometimes to do it. So yeah, you have to have a really good relationship with clients, accountants, and CPAs.

 

Steven Jarvis, CPA (19:55)
Yeah, absolutely. TJ, what’s something you wish you would have known at the beginning of the tax filing season that you had to learn through some pain during the filing season?

TJ Bruce (20:04)
So this year we’re gonna set up our process a lot differently, a lot more systematic and a lot more organized and structured. The advisor we took over for, he’s been doing it for so long that he can just do it off the top of his head on a napkin, it’s no problem. For us, we learned that we need some organization and structure. So when it comes to how to drop in, forms in clients documents, we’re to have a couple of windows and say, on by. We’re going to have a time for a couple of weeks, man, that we’re going to do data entry and get the tax returns filed. And then after that, late week of March to early April, that’s when we’ll sit down with clients and say, Hey, here’s what we’re thinking. Here’s what your returns looking like for this year. And if we need to make any modifications or amendments, that’s when we’ll be able to do it.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (20:49)
Yeah, I love your commitment to continually improving there. Iit feels simple on paper. It’s gather my tax documents, put them into a tax return, file the tax return. And if we’re only doing one or two tax returns, maybe it’ll go that way, but it’s all the exceptions that catch up with us and having that system makes all the difference. Especially as advisors’ teams grow, that’s also good way to be able to delegate and incorporate other team members to make sure that we’re spending our time on the things that…and only the things that only we can do and just maximizing the use of our time as well. Yeah. So TJ, no regrets getting into tax prep. Value add for your business, for your clients…

TJ Bruce (21:20)
Yeah, yeah, like I said, we really overlooked that part of the business when we bought the book and I’m super stoked that we had the opportunity to go through it and look through it because that’s how it’s added into our planning for clients is you got to know how to see a 1040 and how to read it and how to see, hey, they got income here, they got income coming from here. So, you know, we got to be mindful of that for future planning.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (21:44)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, TJ, I really appreciate you spending some time and sharing your experience, your perspective on this.Yeah, well, it’s always so helpful to hear from other people’s experiences and for advisors listening, if you’re considering going out and adding tax prep to your firm, whether that’s through acquisition or hiring someone, find other advisors who have been through this process. You can learn so much from people who’ve recently been through this. You can look TJ up on LinkedIn. You can find other advisors who’ve done this before. If you want other examples, shoot me a message. I’m happy to connect you. It is incredibly valuable to talk to people who’ve gone through it. If you see the value in tax planning, tax preparation, that collaboration, and you’re not quite ready to add it in house, reach out to the RTS team, advisors@rts.tax. We’re in the process of screening advisors for joining our program for this coming filing season. We’ve grown our team this year and are excited to be partnering with more advisors for the 2025 filing season. So again, advisors@rts.tax. We’d love to have a conversation about how that could work. So TJ, again, thank you so much for your time and I wish you all the best of luck with this upcoming filing season.

TJ Bruce (22:40)
Yeah, thanks, Steven. Like I said, appreciate you putting out content, helping other advisors. It’s big help in my journey. So I know you’re helping other people out there too.

Steven Jarvis, CPA (22:48)
Love to hear it for everyone listening until next time good luck out there and remember to tip your server not the IRS.