Kat Jennings | TaxConnections

14 Apr 2024

The Life Of A Tax Advisor In The Israel War Zone Today

Over the weekend, I reached out to a Tax Advisor in Israel to learn what was is happening on the ground there. Here is what this Israel/US Tax Advisor (who we will keep anonymous) communicated in his letter to me. To protect this Tax Advisor, we are providing portions of his communication. If you believe you have had a tough tax season, you will appreciate learning what it is like for a US/Israel Tax Advisor in Jerusalem today!

To protect his identity, we will call him David. If you would like to support David and his family, providing your commentary through this site will get to him. Few Americans realize what it is really like for the people living in Israel today.

For the record, TaxConnections does not support war of any kind. We support world peace. Pray for peace for all people.

Hi Kat,

THANK YOU FOR REACHING OUT!!!!! As you know, most of the world does NOT care and/or is brain dead.

We had a very scary night. We already received reports that the Iranian attack was due to hit us between 2 to 4:30 AM.

We prepared our war room, a room that newer buildings have that is specially reinforced to offer some protection in case.

Scuds (remember Sadam Hussein who shot scuds at Israel a few years ago!) landed and exploded nearby. The war room is NOT strong enough to resist a direct hit, however. We stocked water bottles, lights, airbeds, and face masks and flashlights for emergency use.

Then, at 1:30 or 1:35 AM, we heard several huge explosions near us. Our building shook and rattled, but we could not see anything outside of our windows. We live on the 7th floor of an apartment building in southern Jerusalem. We are surrounded by Arab Muslim villages who have perpetrated many terrorist attacks against us, so we are ALWAYS concerned about another October 7th massacre emanating from these hostile villages. Talk about close proximity to your enemy who is a couple of blocks away ( 1/4 mile?).

There were 6 -8 rockets, missiles, and/or drone that struck near us and put the real fear of G-d into us…. our poor dog was howling and scared out her mind also…….and the Home Front Command Air Raid Sirens went off for 10-15 minutes.

Then, there were continuous smaller booms and explosions, but we still could not see anything. We have clear views to the north, to the east into Jordan, and to the south. We have the privilege to see the Temple Mount, much of Jerusalem, Jordan, and the Dead Sea from our windows and porch.

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Expatriate Taxes • Israel Tax Advisor

29 Mar 2024

Important Information Every Tax Professional Should Know When Searching For A Tax Job

What Every Tax Professional Should Know When Searching For A Tax Job

Build A Personal Tax Brand: Secrets To Being Hired For Tax Jobs You Should Learn Now

Many tax professionals lose wonderful opportunities to be considered for the best tax jobs because they do not know how to position themselves to be selected for these roles. This article focuses on my experiences in tax professional search and what I learned from the actions tax professionals took to rise to the top of the profession. If you are thinking about entering the tax profession, or already in the profession and want to know how to be considered for a tax roles, there are steps you need to take. For the purpose of a tax professional audience, I will break this article into five categories: Public Accounting Tax, Corporate Tax, Law Firm Tax, Independent Tax Services, and Government Tax Roles.

In writing this article, understand the information comes from my experience in working on more than one thousand tax searches over thirty years. You learn a lot when you are speaking with tax professionals in private conversations about their experiences working in these uniquely different tax work environments. You will learn what I learned about these vastly different tax environments; you will learn from this article what tax professionals liked working in a particular environment and the reasons why they decided to leave for another work environment.

Public Accounting/Consulting Firm

A public accounting firm is an ideal place for anyone to enter the tax profession. You will learn alot in a small boutique accounting practice or a mid-level to large firm. This is simply a great place to begin building your tax and accounting career. If you are fortunate enough to catch the attention of a mentor to guide you, all the better. This is the ideal environment to enter the tax and accounting profession and begin your tax career.

The greatest amount of turnover in public accounting is at the 3 to 5 years of experience where tax staff/tax seniors want to continue to grow. Many tax staff/tax seniors may want to stay until they make manager before they leave the firm. However, the truth is if someone has decided to stay and make manager in public accounting, compared to a tax staff/tax senior who has combined 5 years of experience in public accounting and a corporate tax environment; the hiring executives in corporations prefer hiring the candidate who has combined public accounting/private industry experience. This is a fact. Ask any corporate tax director and they will tell you the same. My advice to younger tax professionals is to focus on the learning experience, not the title.

If you are in public accounting and want to move to another firm, I would then understand the title is the primary driver for most in an accounting firm. What I would advise key hiring managers in public accounting is the best way to retain your professional staff is to invest in their training and education. For instance, you could train your staff in partnerships by sending them to a high-quality partnership education seminars like taxforums.com. Charles Levun and Michael Cohen are nationally trusted trainers in tax partnerships. They go through multiple case studies in their seminars which are highly rated sessions. They generally conduct annual training seminars on tax partnerships in May and June which you can find here: https://www.taxforums.com/default

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Find Tax Advisor • Find Tax Job • Find Tax Professional • Tax Partnership Training

22 Mar 2024

Grow Your Visibility: A Gift That Keeps Giving To Tax Bloggers

If you are a writer who enjoys publishing articles about tax topics, you will benefit from www.taxconnections.com growing readers of tax content. With constant changes in tax laws going on nationally and internationally, it is a good idea to publish your articles on a platform interested in reading them. Take a look at our site metrics at https://www.taxconnections.com/site-metrics to understand we have the audience interested in reading tax content. Whether you are a neophyte or an advanced writer, you grow your audience through your written publications. This is a fact!

TaxConnections has built an audience of tax professionals who write and provide updates on tax rules and regulations around the world, and taxpayers who want to be informed of tax updates. WE have a captured a audience of readers interested in tax articles. How do you get your articles published and distributed globally on TaxConnections? You simple join as a TaxConnections Member at this link: https://www.taxconnections.com/membership/sign-up and then send a message tous to post your blogs. One of the remarkable assets we provide our bloggers is a special link to all their blogs posted. For example, underneath the photo under every bloggers professional profile page is a yellow circle stating ” View My Blog”. You can see an example on my Professional Page: https://www.taxconnections.com/Kat-Jennings-CEO/12257589/United-States/California/California/profilepage. You can see all of your blogs ever posted and you can go to the bottom of each blog to see how many people have read each blog posted. The information is always there! We have found over time many blogs receive 6000 to 7000 views over a six month period. It is a gift that keeps on giving when you post your blog content on TaxConnections.

Whenever you want to educate your clients, simply send them the link that has every single blog posted and this will educate clients on your expertise, Posting your articles on TaxConnections is a fantastic way to promote yourself and your tax expertise. Tuesday through Fridays, TaxConnections distributes your blogs more than one hundred thousand times weekly, or 5.2 millions distributions of blogs annually. This has a great uplift of your online visibility.

Start Your Membership Here: https://www.taxconnections.com/membership/sign-up

Start Here To Send Us A Message About Your Blog Being Posted: kat@taxconnections.com

Start Growing Your Audience Today

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Tax Blogger Distribution Channel

14 Mar 2024

Marketing: Finding A Tax Professional Is Changing In 2024

Marketing: Finding A Tax Professionals Is Changing In 2024

For years, finding a tax professional with the requisite knowledge, skills and experience has remained the same. Ask a friend for a referral, look online to see who paid the most to appear in a top ad, spend time looking online and spend even more time looking through multiple links trying to find a tax professional with the specialty skills you need. Time and time again, taxpayers are unable to find a tax professional who has the best skills for the tax work that needs to be done.

For more than thirty years, we have been retained to find a tax professional for clients all over the world who want access to the most qualified tax professionals around the world. During this same time, we have been asked by the executives who have retained us to find a tax advisor who they can hire for their personal tax needs. This is why we have received inquiries like the following requests:

Example Case One

A U.S. Citizen wanted to purchase a MuzzBuzz Coffee Franchise in Australia for their son who moved there; however, they needed tax advice on how to structure the purchase of the franchise. We searched our tax professional database and referred them to an Australian tax advisor.

Example Case Two

A Japanese Company CEO contacted a former Chapter President of a Colorado Enrolled Agent Association (He found the EA on our site) and asked if they would return his call. The Enrolled Agent was surprised and asked if the call was real. I told him to call the CEO who finally had a conversation with or EA member that he had a manufacturing facility in Colorado and needed tax advice. ( I do not know if he was hired but I do know the call was real).

Example Case Three

A CEO from Greece contacted TaxConnections and asked for a referral to a tax advisor in New York as he owned several large commercial buildings in New York City he was getting ready to sell and requested a referral to a tax advisor. (We referred him to a tax advisor in New York City who spoke Greek, Italian and English).

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Find Tax Advisor • Find Tax Expert • Find Tax Professional • TaxConnections

12 Mar 2024

Tax Advisors: Why It Is Smart To Shift Your Marketing Strategy Now

According to former CIA Analyst Andrew Bustamonte, nine out of ten people do not take- action when advised to do so. However, “the people who do take- action first gain a competitive edge, a forty percent lead, over those who fail to act first.” Early adopters of new technology tend to be trendsetters and innovators who have early access to new technologies to increase their customer base with more practical solutions. If you are in the business of marketing your expertise or your firms’ expertise, as an innovator you are more likely to try out newer ways to increase your customer base.

While most struggle with old ways of marketing that no longer produces the desired result; early adopters who try new solutions to get ahead in business gain the competitive advantage. It is well-known early adopters are most in tune with what is happening in the world of technology, and they are on the cutting edge, willing to invest the time and budget to try new solutions. Early adopters drive the way for the rest of the industry to find better solutions they need to be more successful in the profession.

Back in 2010, an email came to my desk with an offer to buy Bitcoin at .05, and I did not take action on that opportunity. Today, that same Bitcoin is worth $72,551.40. What I am about to share with you is another opportunity that early adopters have the potential to benefit from. The early adopters who take action will have the advantage over competitors who are searching for ways to market their tax expertise. I missed an opportunity because of my failure to be an early adopter of something new.

The tax industry, a niche business vertical, is facing the most competitive marketplace in history. As a result, tax advisors are required to raise their visibility, showcase their specialty tax expertise, and cultivate brand awareness to stay competitive.

TaxConnections Marketplace is where talented tax advisors are discovered by high-net-worth individuals, and business executives in small, medium, and large companies worldwide needing a wide range of specialty tax expertise.

TaxConnections Marketplace is implementing artificial intelligence into its platform to enable our AI Brain to search through our tax professional members profiles to identify the advisors with specialty tax expertise our visitors are searching to find around the world.

Artificial intelligence is advancing at a rapid pace and there are technologies emerging that will have a great impact on the tax profession. TaxConnections is working on a conference Thursday, October 24, 2024, about the new technologies, tax, and AI innovations. We are launching our own AI innovations for the world to see. We are making it easier for the world to find your tax expertise online. For this reason alone, you will benefit as an early adopter of our solutions by becoming a Tax Professional Member now in our global tax marketplace.

In the meantime, we want you to know this about AI, “The key factor regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI) is that it is a system that does not possess critical thinking or reasoning skills. It generates text or information that stems from a base of information supplied to the system. Any received “input” becomes available for output.”

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Marketing Tax Lawyers • Marketing Tax Professionals • Marketing Tax Services • Marketplace Facilitator • TaxConnections

01 Mar 2024

TaxConnections AI Will Transform How Your Tax Expertise Is Discovered Online

TaxConnections Will Transform How Your Tax Expertise Is Discovered Online

We realize you are busy this time of year. However, we highly recommend you are alerted to the transformation occurring in the way people find tax advisors and tax services online.

TaxConnections has been introducing high-net-worth business executives to technically talented tax advisors for thirty years. View clients we have referred tax professionals on searches: https://www.taxconnections.com/tax-executive-search-services

TaxConnections transformation to AI will greatly impact how tax professionals connect with high-net-worth individuals, small and medium businesses, and multinational corporations. We are building our AI transformation around the relationships we have with tax advisors appearing on www.taxconnections.com. In other words, your tax expertise will surface in our A.I. search algorithm if you are a TaxConnections Member or a TaxConnections Sponsor.

We suggest you position your firm Tax Advisors on the soon to be transformed to A.I. search technology. If you are not have a paid subscription on our platform, your tax services will not be found. When you join as a TaxConnections Member, you will appear as referred for new business on our platform.

To drive results and save resources, marketers are using AI to carefully target niche demographics, and optimize marketing campaigns based on valuable insights. Marketers are also
using behavioral targeting powered by AI marketing in front of the right people. Millions of taxpayers come to TaxConnections to find the right tax advisors with specialty expertise. Once AI is implemented (what we feed into our AI Brain), it will be easier for our visitors to find a wide range of specialty tax expertise and resources.

In Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise, 3rd Edition, 26% of the people surveyed and 45% of AI adopters agree that AI has enabled them to gain a significant advantage over their competitors.

If you would like to have your tax services advisors receive referrals on the TaxConnections AI searches , please reply with a time to speak with you over the phone. We will ensure your visibility gains a competitive advantage selling tax services. Request a Sponsor summary.

Early Adopters Get The Clients!

All the best,

Kat Jennings, CEO
858.999.0053 X100
www.taxconnections.com
View Kat Jennings BIO: https://www.taxconnections.com/Kat-Jennings-CEO/12257589/United-States/California/California/profilepage

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Marketing CPAs • Marketing Enrolled Agents • Marketing Tax Advisors • Marketing Tax Lawyers • Promoting Tax Professionals • TaxConnections

02 Feb 2024

Reasons Tax Professionals Leave Organizations: Reasons Tax Professionals Stay

After conducting more than one thousand tax professional searches over three decades with the support of our team, I have learned why tax professionals leave many organizations. Given the importance of hiring tax professionals, I thought it would be helpful to share information that will help you retain your tax team longer. This article focuses on the reasons tax professionals shared about leaving and staying in tax organizations.

First, tax professionals are highly educated with many of the people we work with having earned a BS, BA, and/or MST, and/or MBA, and/or JD and/or LL.M and/or CPA. Tax professionals are smart, lifelong learners who often deal with technically sophisticated tax issues. Years ago, I spoke with a tax executive and asked him what he loved most, and he said he loved the transactions that were technically sexy. This was a tax executive who thrived on solving complex tax issues. The tax executives we have come to know over many years are smart and creative and the best of the tax profession.

What drives tax professionals to spend years and money on education, gain specialized training in a public accounting firm, a law firm, and/or a corporation? Why should tax management executives and CFOs plan for 15%-30% attrition annually? People’s lives are constantly changing; management must prepare for changes in their tax organization. It is how management prepares that will determine the successes and failures of an organization. I wrote this article to help you address these changes. There are reasons why tax experts move to other organizations and reasons tax professionals stay for many years.

Public Accounting

My advice to anyone entering the tax profession is to start with a public accounting firm to gain the training. What often occurs in public accounting is high turnover at the three-to-five-year level of experience. The reasons that tax professionals provide us most often for leaving are stated below.

Reasons Tax Professionals Leave Public Accounting

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Tax Recruiter

11 Jan 2024

Be Aware When Hiring For A Tax Organization: A.I. Versus Human Recruiters

As a thirty-year veteran in executive search for tax professionals, I have a special set of skills. Remember the Liam Neeson movie quote in Ransom: “What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long time. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” However, in the case of a career in executive tax search, highly trained tax recruiters like me have skills that prevent nightmares for companies. What concerns me now are companies who are leaning on A.I. software to solve their recruiting challenges. Human recruiters will far surpass any A.I. software in identifying the very best candidates.

There is not a day that goes by without a message about A.I. in my inbox. In executive search, I do not fear A.I. but I fear the false sense of superiority in results using A.I software over human intelligence. It is known that one of A.I.s biggest flaws has less to do with technology and more about A.I. systems to making false assumptions about certain groups of people or to misidentifying people of color in facial recognition that reflects the biases in multicultural societies. Additionally, as people age, their voices often change, and I imagine this will impact A.I. results as well. Imagine being locked out of your job or bank account because A.I. does not recognize your voice. An A.I. nightmare that is bound to happen to many folks(sheeple) running into the arms of A.I. which appears to be a solution for everything these days.

Increased reliance on A.I.-driven solutions leads to less face-to-face interactions, eroding social bonds established between a recruiter and the candidates, and their impact on the search process. The art of highly successful executive search has a lot to do with evaluating candidate soft skills: interpersonal skills, problem solving, communication, adaptability, critical thinking, creativity, empathy, leadership capacity, and their ability to work successfully on teams.

Allow me to demonstrate what I am talking about with real world experience:

Tax Executive Search Case One: A company has a particular tax problem that was created by a previous employee that has put the company at great financial risk. The company and executives are under the biggest audit of their company history which could cost them 500K to 1M in tax, penalties, and interest. The company has an option of using an AI software Recruiter to find a candidate or they have the option to utilize a real human Tax Recruiter who knows the market and speaks privately with tax executives who have solved similar problems. These are private company matters that should never be input into an AI software to search for the very best executives to handle a highly confidential search for a tax executive with these skills.

( Note: Confidentiality and privacy is so important in a tax executive search because of the sensitivity involved in these searches. Communicating these sensitive matters to A.I. is not likely to happen.

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Tax Recruiting

26 Dec 2023

Organize All Your Professional Assets Online To One Location: TaxConnections Makes A Difference In Your Marketing Strategy

The week between Christmas and New Years is the ideal time to organize yourself and your tax services practice for a maximum marketing effect for the coming year. Tax professionals waste so much time looking for information to forward to clients throughout the year, we built the TaxConnections platform to save valuable time. We also want to emphasize that most tax professionals have assets spread out all over the internet working to elevate big tech media sites. TaxConnections works to elevate the tax professional members online.

Tax Professionals have assets that include: articles written, blogs posted, podcasts, recommendations, tax questions you have answered, twitter/X links, videos, work history,and the list goes on. TaxConnections understands the value of having all your professional assets available in one online location that elevates the tax professionals expertise. Tax professionals often do not have the time to market and need a better marketing strategy for themselves. TaxConnections fills the role through a platform that does the heavy lifting marketing tax professionals in the accounting and legal profession. TaxConnections also helps promote professionals in wealth planning, estate and gift planning, financial planners, bookkeepers and any professional who supports the tax profession (marketing professionals, software companies, small, medium, and large size businesses, and more.)

How much time do you spend looking for content about you and your services throughout the year? A TaxConnections Profile provides an advantage over competitors by positioning you for success.
Is your content helping big tech sites or is your content elevating your expertise to taxpayers searching for your expertise online? Answer: your content is being used by big tech sites to build a social credit score on you. The worst part is you are participating with sites who are using your information so governments can build social credit scores that work against you.

Secret most people do not know. Whenever you click a Like button, you are giving them permission to track your likes which the big tech companies store for your social credit score. So Stop clicking the tracker buttons on yourself!

What happens if your business is disrupted due to electricity being down in your area? TaxConnections provides all members with a backup Virtual Office you can access via your cell phone. Your business operations are back up in a few minutes by using your cell phone to access your services in the cloud… as long as you are a TaxConnections Member and you have taken 20 minutes to set up your Virtual Office. You simply add your links to your Virtual Office of your cloud services and never need to give us your passwords for improved security. You are in control.

Watch these two videos to see what we have built for all of you: https://newdev.taxconnections.com/videos

Call 858.999.0053 for help in elevating your tax services firm or software company to a dedicated tax audience. Marketing you is what we do!

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in TaxConnections

15 Dec 2023

Highest Corporate Tax Rates Around The World: Learn How U.S. Presidential Candidates Propose To Tax U.S. Taxpayers

(VERY SPECIAL SURPRISE AT END OF THIS BLOG POST- LIMITED TIME ONLY AVAILABILITY FOR NEW TAXCONNECTIONS MEMBERS ON DECEMBER 15th or 16th ONLY, 2023)

According to the Tax Foundation, the Highest Statutory Corporate Income Tax Rates in the World, 2023 are:

20 TOP CORPORATE TAX RATES IN 2023

Also, we recommend you visit the Tax Foundation sites analysis on each 2024 Presidential candidates view on taxes. The non-profit Tax Foundation provides excellent insight on what you are actually voting for with each Presidential candidate’s views regarding tax increases or decreases.

Go to this link before you vote: https://taxfoundation.org/research/federal-tax/2024-tax-plans/ . You can compare the tax views of Presidential candidates: Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Robert Kennedy Jr., Marianne Williamson, and Dean Phillips at this link. Good luck to you all during your heartfelt and hardworking journey across the United States of America discussing your views on taxes.

Commentary by the tax professional community is greatly appreciated by our loyal readers. If you are not a member of TaxConnections, everyone joining us now and on December 15th or 16th will receive an extra year membership if they join on December 15th 2023 only. All new members who join on December 15th or 16th only will benefit from this one time only offer.

Contact kat@taxconnections.com via email to ask for help in optimizing your Professional Page and to position yourself in the direct path of taxpayers searching for your tax expertise on www.taxconnections.com. You can also call 858.999.0053 or text me at 858.232.4415 in advance to set up a time to walk you through membership set up. We want to meet you and learn about your specific needs. We offer firm packages, too.

Merry Christmas,

Kat Jennings, CEO

www.taxconnections.com

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Marketing Tax Firms • TaxConnections

08 Dec 2023

Watch Our Two Videos To See What We Do For You At TaxConnections

Watch Our Two Videos To See What We Do For Your Tax Career

Watch The Videos at https://www.taxconnections.com/taxblog to understand the benefits of TaxConnections Membership. We exist to support the tax professional community and do the heavy lifting required to promote your tax expertise to an audience who wants to find and interact with you. With millions of searches conducted online for tax expertise each year, now is the time to position your professional profile to attract the taxpayers who arrive searching for tax expertise all over the world.

While big tech companies are collecting all your data to create social credit scores on you, we do not do that. Protecting your privacy is a priority for us. Many of our tax professional members are emerging small to medium size tax practices responsible for serving small to medium size growing businesses. We care to build a site that protects our members in ways that ensure your success. Some of our members have connected with the biggest clients of their tax careers. We encourage you to join us to organize all your content assets in a way they work for you. We also care about the companies we associate with and take great care to tour and explore or Sponsors products and services before bringing them to you on the www.taxconnections.com platform.

When they treat us well, we know they will treat you well, too!

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in TaxConnections

21 Nov 2023

Learn How To Bring All Your Tax Professional Assets Together Online With TaxConnections Profile And Virtual Office

Are your professional content assets scattered all over the internet? Learn how to bring all your content assets together to elevate your personal brand.

A valuable feature of TaxConnections Membership is our Virtual Office technology.

The most important benefit of Virtual Office technology is the ability to store all your important business assets in one online location. A Virtual Office works to build trust in your expertise by linking together all your professional assets to your TaxConnections Professional Page.

Do you know linking all your professional assets to one online location gives you the greatest advantage over competitors. We ensure all your online assets are linked together to elevate your reputation and visibility higher on the search engines!

BRING YOUR PROFESSIONAL ASSETS TOGETHER ONLINE THROUGH TAXCONNECTIONS

RESUME PROFILE- Your TaxConnections Professional Profile is free and accessible to a steady stream of Prospective Clients.

ARTICLES – Organize and link ALL YOUR ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS to your online Professional Profile Page.

AUDIO PODCASTS –Organize and link ALL YOUR PODCASTS to your online Professional Profile Page.

BLOGS – Organize and link ALL YOUR BLOGS so visitors can VIEW MY BLOG under your photo(s).

PERSONAL LIBRARY– Organize and link ALL YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLES to your online Personal Library and Professional Profile Page. You save time by having them all accessible on one link.

Written by Kat Jennings | Posted in Virtual Tax Office