Today, I’m trying something different. Let me know what you think.
Field Guide: The Idea
About 18 months ago, Cameron Ware and I were talking. He offered up an idea to make his tax season more efficient: tax publications written with the Pareto Principle in mind.
Eighty percent of a tax pro’s work is generated by 20% of the tax rules. Why clutter things up with the exceptions and edge cases that will never be relevant to the typical tax pro working on the typical client’s typical tax return?
The BNA Portfolios, in all their glory, are extravagant overkill for 80% of the tax questions we face in day-to-day problem-solving.
Cameron called this a Field Guide. Most of the time you don’t need the Encyclopedia of Everything. You just need a Field Guide you can stick in your pocket to help you quickly navigate to your destination.
Well, I got busy with one thing or another, the Perfectionist Module in my brain convinced me that Now Is Not The Right Time, I went through the usual “Oh, that’s a lot of work” thoughts. Perhaps your brain works like mine.
The First Field Guide
And . . . well, I’m in the midst of preparing a speech about the Form 5471 filing categories and I suddenly thought “This could be a Field Guide.”
So here you go: the first Field Guide. Click the link to download the PDF.
FG – Form 5471 Category 3 Filing Requirement – v1.pdf
This is an 80/20 look at how to figure out if you have a Category 3 filing requirement for Form 5471. I omitted the edge case stuff (foreign captive insurance companies and foreign sales companies) because . . . c’mon. How many captive insurance company projects does the average practitioner work on?
Feedback, Please
Tell me what you think. Is this kind of thing useful for you? Too wordy? Too much detail? What’s it missing, in your opinion?
Also, if I were to write more of these, what topics would be useful to you if you could have little guides/explanations/checklists for your practice?
Email me at phil@hodgen.com.