For independent tax professionals
And every April, you hand them the return and that's where it ends.
This page explains what it would look like to change that.
The first one you already feel every summer. More than 80% of the individual returns tax professionals e-file in a year are filed by the April deadline — 72.5 million of 87.9 million in 2025, according to the IRS. Then the phone goes quiet, and you spend the rest of the year living off ten weeks of work and waiting for January.
You didn't build a bad business. You built a seasonal one. Those are different problems.
The second is bigger.
You aren't underpaid. You're uncompounded — and you see everything, and you're allowed to act on none of it.
You know which client has a Schedule C throwing off ninety thousand dollars and no retirement contribution. You know who just had a baby and carries no coverage. You know who's 58 with nothing set aside, who's supporting a parent, who's about to sell a business and has no idea what's coming.
You see it every year. And the only thing you're permitted to do is print the return.
From the company's most recent published income disclosure, of the agents who were paid anything at all: 44.1% earned under $1,000 for the year, 74.9% earned under $5,000, and 2.02% earned over $100,000. Everyone who earned nothing is excluded from those figures.
We lead with this because you would find it out eventually. We'll send you the full document before you decide anything.
You have hundreds of households who already hand you their W-2s, their Schedule Cs, their dependents, their side income and their bank details — voluntarily, every single year, because they trust you.
That is not the same starting line. It's not close to the same starting line. Whether it's enough is a fair question, and it's the actual thing worth talking about on a call.
Three, and all of them are normal. Get licensed and write your own business. Get licensed and hand the appointment to one of our experienced partners, splitting the commission with them. Or build a team and earn on their production as well as your own.
You don't have to decide which one you are today, and people move between them. The three, explained properly →
$199 to join, once. ~$185–600 for your state licence — coursework, exam and fingerprinting, paid to the state, not to us. Once you're licensed, roughly $375–850 a year in California and $360–780 in Nevada for E&O cover, renewal and continuing education.
Two reasons, and the second one is a legal deadline hiding in plain sight.
The first is simply that you can hear the phone right now. Once your season starts you can't, and we wouldn't try.
The second is IRC §7216. If you ever want to use what's on a return to have a conversation with that client about anything else, the written consent has to be collected at intake — before the finished return goes out for signature. It cannot be collected afterward, and if a client declines you can't ask them again that year.
Someone licensed before your season starts builds it into their intake packet and has it for the whole year. Someone who starts in the middle of filing season waits until the next one.
Licensing runs roughly three to six weeks in California and two to four in Nevada. Which is why the quiet months are the window, and why we mentioned the timing at all.
Pick a time that works. No preparation needed and no pitch. If you decide on the call that you want to start, you can — but nobody will push you there.
Book a 20-minute callRather just ask a question first? Call (858) 477-8005 or email jennifer@helpinghandsfinancialsolutions.com
Everything that isn't specific to your line of work — what this actually is, who it suits, exactly what happens on a first call, and the questions everyone asks — lives on one page rather than being repeated on four.
Twenty minutes, no pressure, and you'll come away knowing whether this fits the practice you already have.
Book a 20-minute call