The Ides of March finally fell on a Monday when my columns are posted, so I can now write about it. Hooray! It’s been 11 years since it was on a Monday (a fluke of the calendar).
I’ve posted a couple of blogs explaining the significance of that date, but not to accountants. A brief intro is that March 15, 44 BCE, was when Julius Caesar was killed. Shakespeare began "The Tragedy of Julius Caesar" with a warning for Caesar to “beware the Ides of March.” Great play and some great quotes come from it. However, this column is not about Caesar, but about tax time.
March 15 is a busy date. The S corporation and partnership returns are due then, so the K-1s can be distributed timely. The more of those returns that are done and out without extensions, the fewer calls and emails you will get from clients looking for their K-1s. It also reduces stress and pressure. If you haven’t gotten these returns out yet, I suggest doing them ASAP and then moving forward to your individual returns. What I do is schedule my 1040 clients to send me their info or for appointments starting around March 17 or 18, and I give them realistic dates when the returns will be completed. This also eliminates added handling. If a 1099 from a broker is changed, or a publicly traded partnership or hedge fund K-1 is delayed, and the information is provided piecemeal, there are too many workflow system messaging updates.
I am proposing that you condense the individual tax preparation process into about four weeks starting just after March 15. Make that your focus. Schedule the receipt of information along with the preparers, and coordinate the preparers and reviewers on complicated returns. The time-saving tips that I suggested in earlier columns do not matter now. Whatever you did is great, and what you didn’t do no longer means anything. You are in the heat of tax season now and you need to do your best. Doing your best means deciding what your best is, which many do, but too many also do not. You are facing four weeks of concentrated work, and you should allocate your resources toward that and anything that can wait should be scheduled for after April 15.
One thing you should not push past April 15 is the 1040 preparation if you can possibly get the return done now. You have the staff, the mindset, your staff’s family members’ buy-in and your administrative system in place, with overtime provided for and the whole world knowing how busy accountants are this time of year. Do not squander this by doing unnecessary for-this-period work while extending returns your clients allow. This is your time. You will never be this organized and prepared to efficiently and effectively handle returns as you are right now. Also, regardless of your relationship with your clients, they do not like extensions. You don’t usually get paid extra for this, and some extensions require considerable work. They build up your work-in-progress inventory and that delays getting paid, which I never like.
It's tax season; work like it is. Also, have a great tax season.
If you want to read some historical information about the Ides of March, I can email you reprints of two blogs I posted. Send your request to
Do not hesitate to contact me at
Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, is partner at
