iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 17/02/2026

I fed Claude Opus a Schedule D calculation worksheet and asked it to explain it in plain English for my client. It got half the shit wrong.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 17/02/2026

I’ve been experimenting with frontier models and tax documents. They can’t even get basic shit right Without me having to correct them.

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Reposted by Bill Kinney, CPA

Bill @billhelm.lol · 18/07/2025

Former leader in IRS comms at the conference I’m at: “this may be the worst filing season since 1985” - primarily because of the combination of staff reductions and OBBB.

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Reposted by Bill Kinney, CPA

Bill @billhelm.lol · 14/07/2025

I like to read my timeline here in reverse chronological order. Tweetbot back in the day was good at that. @phoenix.tapbots.com will be if it ever comes out. In the meantime I’ve discovered that @skeetsapp.com does this! New customer for them.

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Reposted by Bill Kinney, CPA

David Brauer @dbrauer.net · 03/07/2025

Gives me no joy but the accountants have summarized the Kill Bill’s tax law changes (which will be the Senate bill discussed in the story). A lot of bad giveaways & dumb take-aways but many could affect you: www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2025/ju...

journalofaccountancy.com

House begins debating Senate reconciliation bill with tax changes

The fate of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its many tax provisions now rests with House members. The Senate passed its version of the bill Tuesday but it contains key differences from the version ...

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 19/03/2025

Would your company's name look good on this for this year? Get in touch!

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 19/03/2025

The most interesting thing I'm doing right now is trying to find sponsors for @taxretreat.org 2025. Incidentally, if you have a product or service, you want to get in front of a cool group of forward-thinking tax pros, accountants, and adjacent, hit me up and we can chat! #taxsky #taxbs

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 15/03/2025

I also had some extensions that sat around longer than the client desired, and had I known, would've completed sooner. Scheduling and giving them an estimated completion date ensures we have that convo on the front end instead of in September.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 15/03/2025

I sorta botched this last year and need to make customers clear that I'm not going to bust ass to get stuff done that came in after our published deadline that they were all given. I'd love to fully schedule, this is kind of a trial run for that.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 15/03/2025

Decided that I'm going to schedule the rest of my clients as their stuff comes in the door. I am going to tell them they are extended and an approximate date I'll work on it. If they need estimates, we will make our best efforts. Any new clients will get September as their completion timeframe.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 03/03/2025

One of my favorite retiree clients always asks me if I'm crabby when she calls (I guess I was a few times). So on her organizer this year she wrote, Do a good job, Don't be Crabby, Smile! It got the intended response, I smiled.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 03/03/2025

integrated more with doc mgmt, mostly. It by itself is fine!

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 28/02/2025

My colleagues are still mostly using paper for WPS. My brain works better on the computer screen.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 28/02/2025

Enjoying my PDF Workpaper Workflow with Acrobat and Tic Tie Calculate this year. I'd like to get something more robust that the whole firm can use eventually, but this flow saves me time and lets me work from anywhere in a pinch. (I'm in the office most of the time anyway). #taxsky #taxbs

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

He was right. It's working. Small steps every day/month/year and it builds to something bigger. Don't need to big bang and piss everybody off. And a lot of times you just have to ask people what they would change and they'll come up with the same things. We're all human after all. /fin

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

I came in here all jazzed to digitize everything. had a convo with my dad shortly after I started (he was c suite for many years at a big company). He told me "Lead by example - just build your process to suit you first, you can't control how others work or want to work and shouldn't force."

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

my seasonal employee is just "checking in files"... mostly printing those cover sheets, and printing out docs that the client uploaded. this is adding zero value to our clients. 6 ish hours a day of non billable wasted time. Working on it.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

My next goal is to stop passing paper files around the office. It's our de-facto workflow system and I kind of hate it. Most of my files just have our routing cover sheet (yes we have one) and a few pieces of paper that others generated. All my workpapers are digital and stored on our document mgmt.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

oh and forgot hashtag again #taxsky #taxbs - read up there...

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

I want my support staff to be adding client value by doing billable activities, not fighting with printers and software and everything else.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

People get stuck in their ways with tech. Are comfortable with doing something a certain way and just keep doing it that way. Trying to show them, there's better ways, more efficient etc.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

Trying to empower everyone here to occasionally think about two things: 1) Is this process adding value to the client? 2) If no, is there a better way to do it? Thinking like this takes a shift in mindset. It's tough to implement.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 18/02/2025

I keep iterating on process improvements and it's really feeling like it's starting to pay off in my firm. Firm has been around for a long time but many processes were stuck in the 90s, pre-digital workflow. I my personal process on digital now and slowly dragging my partners and employees with me.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 16/02/2025

People are using AI for emails too much. They sound weird a lot of the time. I'm kind of over it!

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 14/02/2025

also their support team is completely worthless. they don't get communications about changes either, it's clear. Such a shit company. People need to start voting with their wallets. I'm ready to burn it down.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 14/02/2025

there isn't even a friggin change log as far as I can tell. Or any communication when they do rug pulls of existing features. We get QBO for our firm for free, so I doubt we'll ever be a priority. I've also been cancelling clients that don't really need QBO and just doing writeups more. screw em

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 14/02/2025

oh just do this (a process that takes 4x as long and wastes everybody's time) in response to a feature they had for DECADES on desktop and online and just decided, Nah we don't need that anymore.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 13/02/2025

yes, was never my first choice. Firm has run Lacerte for 20+ years and has extensive QuickBooks work. Need to figure out exit strategy.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 13/02/2025

It’s a terrible time to do anything about it, but going to reevaluate after the spring season.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 13/02/2025

This experience and others really has me questioning why we pay Intuit ridiculous sums for bookkeeping and tax software for basically 0 support, no heads up as to feature changes, etc.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 13/02/2025

Intuit pulled the “old invoice experience” from our QBO account the other day. We use bundles heavily and they’re not supported, still. Found a workaround but it is kludgy. Does anyone use third party apps to rework invoices? #taxsky #taxbs

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/02/2025

I had to fire one when their return was 98% complete last year because I couldn’t take it anymore. Knew it had a high probability of being problematic and took it anyway. Wrote off the time and moved on but that one stung.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/02/2025

For sure. I was also on a few early starter packs here and got a decent following off the bat, but will definitely try to remember to tag!

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/02/2025

Signed my first 1040 yesterday, did 8 more since then. Here we go!

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Reposted by Bill Kinney, CPA

Brian Streig @cbriancpa.com · 06/02/2025

Dear #TaxSky, if you have a prospective client that starts throwing red flags before you've completed onboarding them, cut your losses and walk away. Trust your gut because it's not worth the risk.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/02/2025

I appreciate the feedback but also don’t tag most of my posts because it invites drive bys by people I don’t want to interact with. Maybe not so true here (yet?) but was on the other place.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/02/2025

They're mostly younger, affluent clients needing tax advisory and compliance help for the first time. Perfect fit for what I'm looking for. Organic social media is still undefeated.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/02/2025

There's a post on reddit asking for tax services in our market and one of my awesome clients replied with my name. I took it a step further and posted my appointment scheduler. That post will likely yield 30 new clients this year.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 04/02/2025

If it's marked vacation home, the IRS and tax software should have some edits to make lack of days a critical, you can't file exception. I know our software doesn't. But people should know this stuff too.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 04/02/2025

at least one client I've recommended recalculating 4 years of returns to adjust loss carryovers. they may even have a taxable profit in some years.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 04/02/2025

I do a ton of them so it's second nature to me, but the basic stuff I've seen wrong: -No Land/Building segregation (really?) -Depreciation not pro rated based on business use -Op ex not pro rated based on rental use. At least none of them took a loss, but everyone was over 150k AGI anyway.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 04/02/2025

Judging from the new client returns I've been getting lately, many tax pros need to brush up on vacation home rules. What a mess.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 03/02/2025

Our firm failed the top heavy 401k test. Ooops. 3% contributions for everyone!

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 30/01/2025

Hold times are bad again, but just had the best practitioner priority service IRS agent I’ve ever had on the phone. Banged through issues and explained a bunch of stuff I didn’t know to me. Was incredibly friendly and helpful.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 14/01/2025

For sure... I've seen some creative ones lately.

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 13/01/2025

what's the end game? get them to send something as a deposit?

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 13/01/2025

I do not like it when clients I like pass away. 2 in the last week. 😢

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/01/2025

I got one of those too today. It reads like a spammer wrote it. But I assume if their call to action is a meeting it’s not a spammer?

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Bill Kinney, CPA @kinney.cpa · 08/01/2025

Your guess is as good as mine. There's lazy clients too...

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