The value proposition is extremely compelling (especially for someone like me who is still procrastinating filing...). Take a picture and have a professional do the work?! Yes, please.<p>That being said, I need to know more before committing. Who are these professionals? How much will it cost me? Am I guaranteed the max allowable refund? I applaud you for bringing simplicity to a field as complicated as taxes, but the devil is still in the details.<p>Overall looks great though! Let me know if I can help test at all, emails in my profile.
SaneTax is a good idea, yes. But remote accountants do exist.<p>I have an accountant who handles everything remotely. I live in Los Angeles and he lives in small-town, Nebraska. I met him once when he did a tour of the country to meet clients and drum up new business.<p>Here's my process:<p>1) I download a PDF worksheet from his website.<p>2) I scan all my documents and fill out the worksheet.<p>3) I send it over https to his LeapFile account.<p>4) We talk on the phone for a few minutes. He asks a few questions to make sure we're "on the same page."<p>5) He e-files for me.<p>6) If I have a refund coming, I get it direct deposited. If not, then I pay with EFTPS and CA web pay.<p>If I want tax advice, I can ask him. If I want to start a business, he can help out. If I get audited, he can defend me. All without me being there.<p>Another nice project would be to make a directory of accountants who can handle the whole tax process remotely.
Couple more thoughts:<p>1. The first thing a user does should not be to register. I should at least be able to see how many tax preparers are in my area and their profiles before registering. Do the preparers have a linkedin or yelp page with endorsements? Is there someone in my FB network that has used this person or liked their services? Nothing compels me to enroll.<p>2. I think the key to all this is helping tax preparers find new customers by leveraging their existing customer base. Tax prep is a word of mouth business and your goal should be to digitize the word of mouth to maximize reach of potential new customers. For example, make it easy for customers to endorse tax preparers by "liking" their sanetax profile,etc.<p>Your sales pitch needs to be: "By using SaneTax, you can leverage your existing customer's social network to find new customers." or something like that.
As an accountant and tax lawyer who works 100% remotely with clients, I'd like to chime in. I definitely think that there is a place for a service that can help people find accountants and lawyers. The average person has no way of knowing how to choose -- what makes a good preparer/counselor? How much should they cost? How available should they be? This is the obvious part of what could make Sanetax very helpful.<p>The less obvious part to folks who aren't in the "industry" is that accountants and lawyers really struggle with technology issues. Technology is not their primary skill and yet tax preparation has become very tech intensive. Add to this all the issues around privacy. There aren't any good solutions that have been widely adopted in these communities for handling confidential material online--i.e. your social security number.<p>Speaking for myself, I use Magic Vortex where I can for file transfer, but have only recently transitioned to using encrypted pdf's in emails and have had considerable problems with client confusion with the files. I cannot imagine the extra technical support that I might have to provide while trying to use encrypted email, even though it's totally warranted. Perhaps Sanetax can help with these issues.<p>I would also like to strongly agree fully with fourply's post. The entire industry is not as simple as it might appear from the outside. Like most things we live with these days, regulations are multiplying even as we speak, and they vary widely from state to state. Accountants and lawyers have to meet restrictive federal and state regulations, including around how we get clients in the first place. Hopefully Sanetax will find ways to work with all these rules.
as a tax attorney and someone with 4 years experience as a volunteer at an IRS VITA site, i am not sure that i'm entirely comfortable with the idea - but maybe i am missing something.<p>first of all, there are preparer regulations that require - well, lots of things. this system could run afoul of those quickly and easily.<p>secondly, the interview process is crucial for me. it can be driven by a form, but it's extremely important to talk with folks about what happened during the taxable year to identify not only potential pitfalls and ensure that everything gets the right treatment, but also to talk about planning opportunities that can save them big $$$ down the road.<p>for people that are foolish enough to go to H & R Block anyway, maybe this would be a valuable thing - but it's not a cookie-cutter process and treating it as such can result in serious fines and/or jail time for taxpayers and preparers.<p>my thoughts: make sure you find yourself a tax law badass to make sure you're doing things right. it will be complicated, and costly - but if you don't get it right out of the gate it's not even worth doing.
I think a major value proposition you could offer (eventually) is ratings of tax professionals. More than just rating though. For example, if someone owns several rental properties, certain Tax Preparers specialize in that, whereas most would be out of their element. So a Tagging system might come in handy. You could tag your return with "Real Estate", or "Home office", or "Moved several times", etc. Perhaps, if sanetax has access to the completed returns, this tagging could be automated. Even if not automated, you can easily restrict the tagging/voting to people who actually used the Tax Preparer, thereby mitigating the problem of fake reviews.<p>The end result is real, reliable information about which Tax Preparers specialize in what I need. That would be awesome.
Is anybody aware of a similar service for finding (traffic) lawyers? Searching for such is unpleasant (especially in a different locality).<p>Edit: I've now signed up to the service, as I've procrastinated equally with my taxes, however- I still don't know what to do. I appreciate the goal is to match taxed/preparer, but I'm not sure what forms are appropriate, which makes uploading them difficult.<p>I see there is a progress indicator to communicate how far along the preparer is with the submitted paperwork, maybe a similar guide for what to submit, and what might be missing? (Also possibly augmented by the preparer if the site doesn't want to become a guide?)
I signed up, and was expecting a very different workflow.<p>IMO, asking me to upload my tax documents without having chosen a tax professional feels backwards. I want to know who is going to be looking at my tax documents. The way things work now, it feels like I'm sending my docs up for bidding. I'm sure that's not what is going on, but that's the perception.<p>Perhaps some general questions up front to help properly route the customer to the right tax professional, then allow for a match, and then finally, once the customer is paired with a tax professional, present the rest of the features.
I like the concept, but the domain is a bet iffy. I read it as "sanitax", which might be misconstrued. Other than than, I like the idea. I would use an actual tax preparer if it wasn't for calling and/or driving.
Is this service for the 85-90% of people who have simple returns consisting of a W-2, a few 1099s, and a 1098? My question is how it'll handle issues like multi-state tax returns, oodles of K-1s, and tracking the basis for those, and figuring out stuff like foreign tax credits? Would the designated Preparer know to ask such questions and wholly handle everything on their end?<p>(I'm guessing that for those complex issues, you'd still stick to a live accountant, and this service isn't geared towards that particular segment of the population.)
I can see why tax professionals could be threatened/worried by this.<p>Effectively someone like myself living in a state with a high Cost of living can outsource to someone in say, IL (who may have CA tax knowledge but now lives elswhere) who would charge much less than the CA-based local accountant.<p>It's also a killer business plan for the marketplace vendor (ie, SaneTax). Who would have known that Amazon could have become such a giant by selling <i>books online</i>?
Is this only for personal taxes, or can my very simple corporation benefit from this? Right now I have an accountant in my home state handling my corporate taxes, but he's not very internet-savvy so things like secure file transfers and even timely email replies are beyond him. I'm looking for a remote accountant for my state that can handle my very simple corporate return--but it looks like Sanetax is only for personal returns? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Have you looked at Snap Tax? <a href="http://turbotax.intuit.com/snaptax/mobile" rel="nofollow">http://turbotax.intuit.com/snaptax/mobile</a><p>If I'm doing a simple filing, what is the value proposition of paying $100s for a tax professional using sanetax when I can use snaptax for $20 and submit right on my phone?
Typo in the first Agent FAQ: "How can Sanetax help my bussiness?"<p><a href="http://sanetax.com/faqsagents.html" rel="nofollow">http://sanetax.com/faqsagents.html</a>
I got Access Restricted page What is mean exactly? Yes, I can fill captcha for access but page dont looks friendly, specially I sure that my machine clean from viruses.