Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Busy Season Problems: No Highlighters, Please; Clients Ignoring Portals; Bad Takeout Food

Posted on by Jason Bramwell

So we kinda slacked off on doing posts on busy season problems this tax season. Sorry ’bout that. But it seems like there hasn’t been as much venting on Twitter this year as in past years. However, now that there’s less than a month left until Tax Day, patience might start to wear thin, so we’ll try to do these a little more often.

Let’s take a look at what BSPs have made their way onto Twitter in the past week or so.

Here’s a public service announcement regarding highlighters:

I’m sure many of you have dealt with this situation once or twice since the beginning of tax season:

A shitty end to a 16-hour (probably) workday:

Drowning in a sea of emails:

This reminds me of what Caleb wrote last year about tax receipts: “[D]umping a bunch of paper into a cardboard container is not preparation; it is trash. Trash goes in the garbage.”

Business extension burnout:

As if tax season isn’t busy enough … :

https://twitter.com/nat1765925717/status/1107488478168842240

Busy season can be really hazardous to your health:

And don’t forget, if you need to take a minute or two to chill out and bring down your blood pressure, hang out on our Busy Season Zen page.

Have a good rest of the week.

Related Posts

Great Big Drawbacks to Getting Your PhD in Accounting

The post the other day on getting an accounting PhD was so inspirational that I devoted several whole seconds to the idea…

Not for me.

Sure, being a professer has its attractions, especially at the end of filing season. Easy hours, nice gym facilities, trampy co-eds — how I miss the world of higher education. And yet I’m not sold.


Right now I have a good job. There’s also a family I want to maintain (sorry, trampy co-eds) and kids to get through school. To get a PhD would require me to walk away from my decently-paid position in this “most profitable small business.” But I must pay attention to the benefits, too, as Caleb related:

“Professors are constantly learning” – To become a PhD would require an odyssey beginning in a university town somewhere, taking boring courses in statistics to prepare me to write some enormous research project that nobody outside of my doctoral committee (poor bastards) would ever read. Sure, all of the practical tax stuff I’ve learned in 25 years of practice would become stale from disuse, but I’d be constantly learning to develop visionary statistical correlations.

“Professors want to make a difference in the world” – Yes, the difference between what I’d be making in my compensation as a graduate assistant for five years and what I make now would be a difference in the world – even a world of difference.

“Life as a professor is full of flexibility” – Yes, especially until you get on a tenure track. You have the flexibility of moving from a one-year fill-in position at Eastern West Dakota State to a similar position at the Utah School of Mines and Home Economics. But no “substantial financial risk,” at least once you’ve thrown away your perfectly good private sector job. No money, no worries.

I’m convinced the whole PhD system is just the same racket as the new IRS preparer regulations – a way for insiders to erect barriers to entry to enable them to raise their prices and milk their customers. But it does protect those poor students from being instructed by anybody with actual fresh knowledge of what a CPA firm looks like from the inside, so thank goodness for that.

Will One Bad Performance Review Doom a PwC Intern’s Chances at a Fulltime Offer?

Editor’s Note: Got a question for the career advice brain trust? Email us at [email protected].

I need some advice. I am doing an internship and all my performance evaluations have been good except one. I got one that said did not meet expectations. All the others were met or exceeded expectations. will the on bad pff prevent me from getting a job offer?

PwC Intern

Dear PwC intern,

Forget about your work ethic; your grammar and spelling should be enough for HR to deny you an offer.

Quick side note: I’m sure Caleb has touched on this before (if he hasn’t, he should), but emails are a representation of your professional image. Spelling/grammar mistakes are excusable when it’s an email to a fellow intern about the evening’s happy hour, but not when you are trying to represent yourself to the client, a partner, a manager, or in this case the GC community. My first piece of advice – proofread your $#!%.

Now, back to your original question. Considering the job market and how strapped for staff the firms will be in the next few years, you should be fine. Modern day internship programs at the Big 4 are a testing ground for both the firms and you, the student. Were you able to fumble through workpapers, create some binders, and generally not piss anyone off? Seems like you did, for the most part. For whatever reason (and considering that you didn’t provide one, I’ll assume the poor ranking was justified) you received a less than satisfactory review on one engagement. The positive reviews will counter this. Also, if you have a positive relationship with your recruiter, he/she will fight for you to receive an offer (after all, HR has their own goals to fulfill).

However, if you rubbed an important partner, manager, or recruiter the wrong way at any time, consider your goose cooked. All it takes is a short “I don’t want this person receiving an offer” email from a person of authority to erase your chances of receiving an offer.
Good luck. Cross your fingers and dot your i’s that you can rise above the poor review.

Please Join All of Wall Street In Ripping On This Clown Immediately

You know, it isn't often when the worlds of finance and accounting can join together, […]