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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

You don't need Hollywood accounting when the expenses exceed the revenue, you can still pocket the revenue for yourself though. You can just stagger things across tax years.

Everyone should do themselves a favor and pay for a CPA firm (not just your friend that happens to be a CPA), learn some things just treat it as expensive education.

Its very different doing exploratory stuff with a CPA, compared to needing a CPA last minute for a problem you already have. They have excerpts from journals they are subscribed to that can inspire you about things you didnt know.

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I think this is great advice, since the first few years of my tax career were spent helping people deal with all the crap that CPAs got them into.

CPAs are good at math and accounting and generally quite bad at reading and applying the law. Use a CPA for your tax filings, and use a tax lawyer for anything that involves complexity. Tax law is administrative law, so a lot of things that would apply to criminal law doesn't apply (for example, tax strategies can retroactively be deemed illegal, taxpayers can be penalized for violating the spirit of the rules despite adhering to the text of the rules, etc.).

Sort of, things can reverse on the administrative side especially when relying on private letter rulings!

I would say make enough money for appeals court!

How do you do this and how much does it cost?

I would say budget $3000 for beginners.

Bump that to at least $10,000 if you wind up putting down a retainer for a tax lawyer.

But CPAs are just as excited to research the same stuff and can give you the same answers, and their sign off on some activities can have some weight.

It gets easier to rationalize when you follow my simple mantra: do things worth litigating over.

Rules out lots of other ways to waste your time.

How do you find one that won’t get you into a huge costly mess with the irs?

I typically ask the CPA for supporting literature and case law if it exists

And gravitate towards the things that have durable consensus or more easily rationalizable consensus

But those kinds of requests during the first consultations make it pretty obvious if you want to work with them. If their whole business is just filing 1040-EZ’s for people with the standard deduction and collecting child tax credits, then they wont be prepared and you can rule them out.

What do you look for as their specialty? Is there a size of firm that you look for? Any key terms that you zero in on that would indicate that they do this type of work? Also how do you actually find a these ? Seems like a Google search won’t exactly bring up the right caliber folks.

You can also always take the time to _become_ a CPA. I've thought about it a few times.

...or take an intermediate position on buy vs build, and _marry_ a CPA. I've regretted it a few times, but on balance I'd recommend it.

> ...or take an intermediate position on buy vs build, and _marry_ a CPA. I've regretted it a few times, but on balance I'd recommend it.

Has the marriage concluded in divorce/death yet? Otherwise I'm not sure how much weight should be placed in that recommendation ;)

Are there generally accepted marriage principles??

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