According to the U.S. Census, 8 million Americans now work from home. That’s 5.2% of the total workforce, up from 5% in 2016 and just 3.3% in 2000.
It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Working from home offers a ton of enticing benefits like more time with family, no commuting, and an escape from office politics.
On top of avoiding office doldrums, you gain the benefit of getting to know your community better. You may run into a neighbor while walking your dog, get to know the couple who owns the local coffee shop, or simply become a familiar face to people in your community. When you gain facetime in your community, people are more likely to work with you when tax time rolls around because they already know you.
With so many people working as contractors and working from home for their small businesses, tax preparers also have a bigger market to tap into: people whose taxes a just a little too complicated to do on their own. When you advertise yourself as a small business owner yourself, people in your community will trust you not to nickel and dime them when preparing taxes.
As a tax preparer, you’re already familiar with the May-December lull when your tax preparer income can take a hit. To protect your bottom line during these off-season months, you need to add new revenue streams to your business model.
Finding home-based work during the off-season isn’t too difficult, but you’ll need to practice certain habits to make it work. How much money tax preparers make here will depend on how well they prepare.
Here are some habits shared by tax preparers who are crushing it as remote workers:
If you’re a self-employed tax preparer, you’ll already know how running your own service-based business is very different from working for an employer.
When providing extra services from home, there are a number of items you’ll need to keep on top of, like:
To stay on top of your admin work, and the many little behind-the-scenes tasks involved in working from home, consider seeking the help of software that lets you make organization a daily habit. The right business software can help coordinate client communication and internal processes, freeing up your time for matters that help grow your business.
Keeping your physical workspace organized is also important. A Harvard study took two groups and gave each a puzzle to solve, seeing how long each would persevere. The group with a clean workspace spent an average of 18 minutes working to solve the puzzle, compared only 11 minutes before those with a cluttered space gave up. Image how much longer you could focus on important work if your brain weren’t distracted by all those piles of papers!
A well-designed work environment can be an incredibly valuable resource for you. Try to set aside one area of your home that’s purely reserved for work activities, and don’t do anything else in there. Some ideas for doing this include:
Another good idea is to leave your home completely and visit a local cafe or co-working space. This helps separate home from work and keep you in a more focused and productive mindset with fewer temptations.
Tax laws change all the time, especially following elections, and the changes can be significant for your clients. Following any changes throughout the year, as they happen, is much better than having to brush up on everything all at once just before tax season.
Changes in tax law can even benefit you. The new tax law, for example, may provide opportunities to increase your salary by adding new services to address changes, such as:
There are plenty of resources to help you stay informed, like AICPA’s Tax Reform Resource Center and the IRS, and it only needs to take a few minutes each day.
As a tax professional, you’re well-equipped to provide a whole range of valuable services to supplement your tax preparer salary. It’s worth taking some time to think about what new services you could start offering and different options for expanding your business.
Can a tax preparer make good money doing more than just tax work? A few ideas could include:
Along with offering new services, there are other ways to grow your existing home-based business. For example, you could ask for referrals and reviews from existing clients. Treat the search for work as a daily task and you’ll be much more likely to generate a good flow of projects.
If you’re working with multiple clients, you’ll have to be proactive when it comes to finding new work. This may well be something you have experience with from your work as a self-employed tax preparer.
You can attract new clients in the following ways:
Getting into the habit of regular, sustained marketing is crucial if you’re to stand out and attract a steady stream of work. When working from home, it’s especially important as people are often looking online and asking friends for recommendations. They can only find you if you make your business known.
As a business owner, your clients are your best resource. Treat them well and strive to exceed their expectations, and they’ll keep coming back to you. If you save your tax preparation clients money, you become a community hero.
You can easily set yourself apart from the competition by being more than just a faceless service provider and building meaningful, lasting relationships with your client base.
You can do this by:
When you’re based at home, building relationships is more important than ever. When you’re dealing with your clients through a screen, things can feel distant and isolated.
It’s important to build strong bonds with your client base and maintain long-distance relationships. Relationships take constant work, and this is one habit that should be a regular fixture in your work-from-home life.
Working from home is great in all kinds of ways, but if you really want to grow your business and supercharge your tax preparer salary there’s no substitute for getting out in the world.
Doing this regularly will not only help you find new clients and grow your business, but it’ll also help you meet people from your industry, make friends, and learn from them.
You can:
Working from home can be highly rewarding and fulfilling in a way that office-based work isn’t. Following the steps in this guide will help you avoid some of the pitfalls remote workers fall into and build the best possible home-based business.
There are countless habits you can start to boost your home-based business as a tax professional.
Tax preparers can make good money by keeping their eyes open for opportunities like offering credit repair services.
See how you can boost your tax preparer business all year with credit repair!