Are you ready to pick the perfect tax professional and avoid the pitfalls of problematic preparers? Tune in to this enlightening episode of Money Talk With Tiff as Tiffany Grant welcomes back the knowledgeable Camari Ellis for a deep dive into the red flags of tax preparation.

Camari, an Enrolled Agent, shares invaluable insights on distinguishing between various tax preparers, such as CPAs, EAs, attorneys, and the unenrolled. He emphasizes the significance of never surrendering your original tax documents and the importance of ensuring your tax preparer includes their PTIN on your return to avoid becoming ensnared in their potential audits.

Discover why bigger refunds aren't always better and how choosing a tax preparer who can't answer your questions can lead to trouble. Camari and Tiffany discuss why an informed client is the best client and how to foster a proactive relationship with your tax professional for strategic planning all year round.

Don't let the allure of a large refund or the convenience of a back-of-the-gas-station tax service lead you astray. Listen to this episode and arm yourself with the knowledge to select a tax preparer who is above board, knowledgeable, and invested in your financial well-being.

Share this episode to spread the word and help others stay on the right side of the IRS!

About Our Guest

Camari Ellis is a Tax Advisor, with over 30 years of experience in the Financial Services & Tax Industry. He is a Black Wealth Advocate. He graduated from Temple University, majoring in Finance, and loves everything related to business, the stock market, and social media.

Connect with Camari

Email: camari@phillytaxteam.com

Book a meeting: https://bookme.name/CamariEllis/consultation

Twitter (X): @thefinancerebel

Instagram: @thefinancerebel

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheFinanceRebel

Connect with Tiffany

Website: https://moneytalkwitht.com

Facebook: Money Talk With Tiff 

Twitter: @moneytalkwitht 

Instagram: @moneytalkwitht

LinkedIn: Tiffany Grant 

YouTube: Money Talk With Tiff Channel 

Pinterest: Money Talk With Tiff

Additional Links & Resources

• Internal Revenue Service | An official website of the United States government

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Copyright 2023 Money Talk With Tiff

Intro/Outro: You know what it is. That's right. It's time to talk

money with your money nerd and financial coach.

Now, tighten those purse strings and open those ears.

It's the money talk with TIFF podcast.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode

of Money Talk with TiFf. I am excited because today I

have Kamari Ellis on the line again. Now,

if his voice sounds familiar, you probably. Probably heard him in the

previous episode where we talked about black wealth and

taxes. But, you know, I had to bring him back because he was

dropping so many gems. And today

we want to talk about red flags or

what to look for when it comes to picking a tax

preparer, because I've heard of so many

horror stories, and we'll probably get into some that Kamari

has seen as well. So thank you so much, Kamari, for coming

on the show again today.

Listen, thank you for having me back. Right.

We, ah, had really fun last, time. We talked about a lot of

things, black wealth and tax related.

But today we're going to talk about something else that's even

more fun, probably, for

sure.

And, you know, I feel like this episode,

well, last one do, but this one will help a lot

of people, stay out of tax

trouble, and that's just hiring the right person.

Yes. so let's just go ahead and get

started. What are some things that. Well, first of

all, first of all, first of all, let's back up, because this podcast

is all about education. Let's educate the people

on the type of tax preparers that they may run

into. So, for instance, what is the

EA, what is someone that's not

credentialed? What type of things can they do? So

on and so forth.

So most times when people think about tax,

they think about a CPA, a certified

public accountant. And that

is kind of the gold standard when it comes to

accounting and tax, so to speak,

because their organization has done a

wonderful job at marketing the

CPA certification, and if

you don't know, it requires a certain amount

of college hours and to do a test,

and then you get admitted to each

state's CPA.

what are they board to their CPA

board. however, you have cpas,

certified public accountants who do taxes

and prepare taxes. You have people

who are enrolled agents, such as myself.

and then you have some attorneys who do

taxes as well, prepare taxes. And then you

have people called unenrolled,

agents or unenrolled representatives

who do taxes as well. And they're just

your regular people who

may have gone to school for. It may have not

gone to school for accounting and tax, but they do

tax returns. So just to kind of

break it down again, we have a CPA,

and I kind of talked to you about what they do and how you get to

that.

Huh?

You have enrolled agents again, I'm an enroll

agent. An enroll agent is,

I'm licensed with the department of

treasury, aka the

IRS, and I am licensed

to help, and represent taxpayers

to. How can I best say this? To help

them with their tax problems before the IRS.

So, for the most part, there's only three

kinds of classes or not

classes. There's only three

designations that the IRS

allows to help people with their tax problems.

Gotcha.

You have enrolled agents, you

have certified public accountants, and you

have attorneys.

Gotcha.

Those three. Nobody else is really

able to represent tax clients

in front of the IRS. And what does it mean to represent them?

It means that I have the ability to

negotiate tax

bills, payments with the

IRS, for my clients on

their behalf with the IRS. Your

basic person who does

taxes and no shade. Right.

They usually are not allowed to do.

You know, hopefully, I gave you a good

synopsis of that. But what

normally happens is people will go to

certain people based on how big of a refund

they get. We all see the commercials.

a lot of times they say, come get your big refund, and you see a

guy jumping out of an airplane with a parachute

or something like that. Or many of

us know their cousin'sister's

boyfriend's homeboy who does taxes out of the

back of a gas station. And a lot of people will go to

them as well. And that can get a little

dangerous and a little costly in the long run,

also.

Yes. So that sounds like our first

red flag.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably

is. And they're probably doing something illegal to get you

that big refund that they're, touting

out there. And so that's one

red flag that you might see. and thank you so much

also for going over all of those different

designations and some things that

people can think about as they're searching for a tax

professional. But let's say, for instance, they're like,

I've been going to the same tax preparer. I

just want to use somebody that is an

unenrolled agent. And so if

that's the case, what are some things that they should be

looking for if they use just a regular tax

preparer, to make sure that they

stay safe as far as their taxes?

Well, number one. One thing I see a lot of people get

jammed up on is they give their tax people their original

documents. Never give anybody your original

documents. Make sure either they're giving you a

copy or you are scanning them and

uploading to a portal. But make sure that

you do not give anybody your

original tax documents. Why?

If they go out of business,

sadly, there are some accountants I know who've died,

especially over Covid. It's really hard to

get your original tax documents back. Now,

in the previous episode that I was on with tiff, I told everybody to

go get an IRS account, and I still

believe in that today. Go get you an IRS account,

because in there, you can also pull

your transcripts, your wage and income

transcripts. Only problem with that is that

they're redacted, meaning that some of the

information is blacked out or covered out.

And so it can also be a little bit

hard to reproduce or redo somebody's

tax return, without all the information.

But it's kind of.

What's the word I'm looking for here? It's another way to go

about getting your tax records if you've lost

them. the other way is you come to a guy like

me and you say, kamara, I need my tax records. You pay

me, I pull your tax records

unredacted, where you have all the information

so you can do, your

returns, without a problem.

And I've seen that situation happen a

lot. Again, sadly, the

accounting field, especially with tax count, is very

stressful. A lot of us have been

retiring again. Like I said, some of us have

died and people have had a hard time getting their

paperwork back. So it can be very challenging at

times.

so that's a need to know. Red

flag.

Yeah, it's a need to know. I wouldn't call it a red. Well, the red flag

is somebody. Their

original documents. Yes.

Right. And if they say, oh, well, I need your

originals, and you can be like, nope, you just need a

copy. Right.

So that's really good information. And if you missed the last

episode, the IRS account is just going to the IRS

website and signing up and creating an account there. And

then you can look at all your information. So I just wanted to put that out there

in case they missed the last episode. And if you did miss the last

episode, go back and listen. but, okay,

so, we have making sure that you don't

give your originals. what else should

people think about or do when it

comes to working with a tax preparer to make sure that they are

protected.

Well, anytime you are working with a tax

professional, you want to make sure they have what's called a p

ten m. It's called a preparer tax

identification number. there's a whole problem

with people who are what's called ghost preparers.

They'll do your taxes, they'll do them in turbotax,

you'll pay them, but they won't put their

name on it, and it'll be under your name.

And if somebody's listening, they're like, well, what's the problem

with that?

Well, the problem with that is especially me. Since I'm

an enroll agent, I am held to a higher

standard. Right.

I have to understand where you're getting

said numbers for your taxes from

and what are they based on? So,

for example, let's say you have a business and

you sell water, and you tell me,

Kamari, I sold a million bottles of water last year

and I made a million dollars. Okay,

great. How did you track that? I don't

know. I just guessed.

Well, we might run into a situation where you are

falsifying your records, and,

anytime, per the law, you

were supposed to prepare as truthful

and honest of a tax return. You can prepare.

So you don't want to unintentionally file

fraudulent tax return. By the way, there is no

statute of limitations on fraudulently

prepared tax returns. So if you do some janky on

your tax returns, like buy kids

and use them, it can come at you

forever. So just keep that in

mind. But, you want to try to

do the best you can

and just have all accurate information

as much as possible.

Yes, for sure. And when you

said buy kids, I chuckled a little bit because of the way you

put it. But when

people be like, oh, let me file your son, or let me

file your daughter, it's a real thing. Uh-huh. It is.

I've seen it. I've synced it.

yes, you sinked it.

And guess what? The IRS knows all about it, too. So a

lot of times people think they can get away with

a thing for a year or two and that they've been

slick. I tell people all the time, you're not that slick.

And the IRS is not that dumb. So you might

get away with it. Some people do get lucky and they slip

through the cracks, but a lot of people get jammed up.

Right? And so that takes me back to the p

ten. So if they put in their

p ten number saying that, hey, I'm the one that

filed these taxes, if they are

janking, it'll go back to them instead of

you.

Yeah, well, listen, the taxpayer

ultimately has the duty to understand what they're

doing. What I mean by that is, when

you're filing a return, the person, the client, has

to sign their return, so they're signing off on

that. However, if

a tax preparer did

something crazy, janky made up some

numbers, didn't tell the client about this,

the client wasn't involved with that. That comes back

to the tax professional. the other thing

is what I've seen over my lifetime,

I've lost clients because of this. Right.

Especially some of, our,

ladies and gentlemen in blue. a lot

of times they'll have somebody on the job who can get them a bigger

return. And this is a situation

that happened with me. I lost a couple of those clients

because they went to somebody

that, could promise them a bigger refund,

and they got a bigger refund. But what happened was

that tax preparer got audited by the

tax preparer. The IRS saw that there was a

pattern of these, quote, unquote,

you can't see me, but I'm putting, my fingers in the

air, of getting them bigger refunds. And they

started digging to those, and they saw that they were

all done improperly. And the numbers

didn't make sense. So what

happened was all the clients, or a large

portion of their clients, got audited as

well. And so it kind of just trickled down with

a trickle down effect that

they got some money for a couple of years, but the interest and

penalty that they wind up paying

at the end, they wind up paying more money.

So just try to find people

who are

integral, have character,

and don't work in the back of gas stations.

Right? So that, to me, sounds like red

flags number three and four.

So three would be, make sure they

have a p ten. and they're putting it on

your tax return

because it's not enough for them to just have it. They need to put it on

there saying that I did this, and

then also making sure

that they are a reputable preparer.

Because if not, I didn't even know that

tax preparers get audited, too.

So now I'm over here

thinking about some people that.

Thinking about some people that are always claiming

they get big refunds for people. And I'm like, oh,

so if they get audited, then all their clients is

going down with them? Kind of. From my

understanding, from what you said, right?

Potentially, yes.

Potentially. Wow, that's scary.

Listen, I will say this right.

there are a lot of people out there that just key

in numbers. I call them tax data entry people.

And so they just get the numbers and they put them in. Right.

But this notoriously

happens to me. I have business owners

and even some, real

estate rental, investor clients that have

terrible books. They don't keep track of anything. They ask

me, well, what's deductible and what's not

deductible. So a good person should be able

to guide you down that road about

what's legally deductible, what's

not deductible, and help you put that

together. And those are things that you can file in your tax returns.

So here's a prime example.

new start business owners, they're like,

I don't know what to file. And so I'll just start

with, do you use your phone for business?

Yes. You call your

booth or your bay on your phone also?

Yes. Okay. So you can write

off a portion of your cell phone.

Uh-huh.

But you can't write off the whole thing because you use

it for business and you use it for personal. And the

IRS loves to target cell phone usage and

write offs because they know most people don't

have separate lines for their,

business, for their cell phones.

But you can take a portion of it. Let's say

your bill is $100 a month. I know that's probably unheard

of these days, but you can write off

$50. I know that they have

that right because everybody uses it by

asking them, some questions, and that then becomes a

legitimate write off on their tax

returns.

Got you. So I just took

away red flag number five is

if you can't ask your tax

repair questions and they can't answer for you.

And this is true story. I've had somebody tell

me that they asked their tax repair, and they said, I don't

know, I just put in the numbers. Then

that is a red flag that that is probably

not someone that you would want to be working with because they

don't know the tax code and

can't help you if things you should.

Be able to ask questions of the people you're working with.

Now, I do have some people who want to ask

you what I call ask holes. they

want to ask you a million and one questions, don't care

about your time. and

I have a friend of mine who's a client who

loves to send me questions. And that's kind of how

my whole social media experience started,

was, I'm tired of answering these questions

a thousand times or saying questions.

So I'll record a video, and then when he

asks it, I'll just send it to him. But

it's okay to not understand and

not be. It's okay to be ignorant in

the beginning. It's a process of

learning and developing. So, yes,

you want somebody you can ask questions to. You

also want to be on a journey to educate yourself as much

as possible. Because I say my best clients

are informed clients because they're

proactive. They're talking to me all year

long about strategy and how to implement it

correctly. And they're doing good books

for my business owners and real estate investors.

So it's good to ask

questions, but don't be

the person that's just asking a question just for the sake of asking

questions. I get people that ask me about trust all the

time. You don't even make any money,

right? You ask me about trust.

I was going to say that sounds.

Like I don't want my baby mama to,

get, my assets because I

haven't been paying child support.

Listen, I know I'm joking, right? But that's

real. And there are a lot of problems with child

support. However.

Ah, I feel the energy that we put in

trying to dodge child support with trust

would simply be solved just by having

a conversation or several conversations and

paying your child support.

Exactly. Bad part.

Your issues would probably go away.

And since we're on the topic of taxes, they will snatch up

that refund if you're behind, too. So

keep that in mind. So thank you so much,

Kamari, for coming back on the show today

and shedding light on some of these red flags that

people could potentially run into when they're

looking at tax professionals or tax

preparers. And so I hope people are listening

to this episode and take it to heart. It's January.

It's time to get your taxes together. Make sure you listen

to this episode. Share this episode to let people

know what they should be looking for so everybody can stay

out of tax problems. for the most part, we can't solve

everything here on the show.

But, Kamari, if people were interested

in finding out more about you utilizing your

services, where could they find you?

So if you want to utilize my services, just send me an email,

which is

kamari@phillytaxteam.com

and I'll spell that out for you.

Kamari@phillytaxteam.com

cammari

at

philly p. Ah. H-I-L-L-Y.

Tax. T-A-X-T-E-A-M

m.com again,

kamari@phillytaxteam.com

and you could also find me on most

socials@phillytaxteam.com. Also,

or phillytaxteam on my instagram, on my

facebook, on my YouTube.

Yeah, that was going to be my next question so people can get those

videos you'd be sending.

but thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Again, this was great information and I'm sure it'll

help somebody. So I appreciate you.

Thank you, Tiff. I appreciate you.

All right, bye.

Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening, joining and being a part of the Money

Talk with TIFF podcast this week. You can check Tiff

out every Thursday for a new money talk podcast.

But if you just can't wait until next week, you can listen

to previous podcast

episodes@moneytalkwitht.com

or follow TIFF on all social media

platforms at moneytalkwitht.

Until next time, spend wise by spending

less than you make. A, word to the moneywise is

always sufficient.