[Traveler1234]

Hi guys, I’m in the middle of tax season as probably a lot of you guys are. I work for a CPA firm in the individual tax department. Been here for about 10 years and enjoy it, I have been promoted and taking on more responsibility. My company has two departments, the high net worth tax and the entity division. I have always worked in the high net worth team and enjoyed working on the various issues of these more complex tax returns. This year they asked me to help them in the entity side.Wow I feel clueless! I’m almost embarrassed to ask for help at my level since I’m not getting very complicated entities but I feel very overwhelmed. I never have worked on any traditional accounting work (debits and credits) or seen anything related to that since college! I majored in accounting just for a solid degree and never enjoyed accounting. I got lucky and fell into my first role out of college and never had to ever do any journal entries etc. I feel so rusty now and I don’t know if it’s because I just can’t get it or am I lazy/so rusty I may need a review course in basic and intermediate accounting?

The reason I ask is because the work I’ve been given to help with requires balance sheet and financial statement related work. I’m beginning to question if accounting was right for me to begin with lol. Thanks for any advice !

[happygal]

I am no where at the level where you are in terms of experience, but maybe if you have a little time you could take a refresher course of financial accounting at a community college, that way you would maybe feel more comfortable with journal entries, and if you have a specific work- related question, perhaps you could ask your professor for some input/advice (indirectly) since most professors have worked in both industry and in academics, that way you would get a refresher course as well as advice from someone experienced when you feel like you cannot get that same kind of help at work.

[Anonymous]

I have been in public accounting 7 years and just became a CPA (put it off as I had little children). We have many business owners with many trust tax and business entity tax returns. We do more trust tax returns than individual tax. There are 5 of us who have been grinding it out the last few years doing massive amounts of accounting , reviews and compilations and then flowing them into the various tax returns. Although many of us disliked it, it has made us very strong accountants and even better tax preparers. I am constantly fixing retained earning roll forwards and other accounting issues for clients. Stick with this, it will make you a very strong preparer and advisor. I actually like entities more because once your balance sheet, book and tax income tie (in the case of business entities, the return should be mostly done). With Trusts, it may be a little more complicated to tie out the taxable income on the tax return. Good luck, I think you will gain a lot of great experience in this role.

[Author]

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