Boo! Scary Stories of Accountants Ghosting
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Have you ever been ghosted by your accountant? You’re not alone! In this episode of the Sunlight Tax Podcast, I’m talking about why accountants sometimes disappear, how to find the right tax professional for your business, and why having your financial systems properly set up can make all the difference.
I’ll share why getting your tax, bookkeeping, and business systems in order is essential for self-employed creatives, freelancers, and small business owners. I’ll also explain how my 2-Day Business Setup Intensive helps entrepreneurs get clarity on their taxes, bookkeeping, and legal setup with personalized guidance and support, so you can stop second-guessing your business finances and start feeling confident about running your business.
Also mentioned in today’s episode:
00:00 Introduction to ghosting stories and why trust matters
02:00 The story of Andy and the pitfalls of S corporations
07:01 How Hannah's intensive helps entrepreneurs rebuild trust
10:04 Kai's story: from fear to confidence in business setup
13:02 The importance of proper bookkeeping and tax planning
14:50 How trust in your setup boosts sales and growth
16:05 Details of the two-day business setup intensive
19:49 Program details, private sessions, and entity guidance
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Episode Links:
Check out my 2-day Business Intensive
Order my book: Taxes for Humans: Simplify Your Taxes and Change the World When You’re Self-Employed
Get your FREE visual guide to tax deductions
Transcript:
Hannah Cole (00:00)
I find a lot of people get
Put into an S corporation, and then the accountant stops responding to emails, doesn't tell the client that they have to set up payroll and just walks away. And now this person starts getting into trouble because they don't have all the pieces in place and they can no longer reach this accountant.
Hello, it's been a minute. I hope you are enjoying the beautiful fall wherever you are.
Coming to you this week with a ghost story, tell me, have you ever had the experience of trying to get help with your business from an accountant and maybe getting some initial guidance, right? But then you find that when you have follow-up questions or when you've set something up, like an S-corp, for example, they ghost you.
You cannot find any help to maintain the thing that you've set up together or you started a project and the you can't find the accountant. You send them an email in September and they don't answer you till March. this is a problem I see a lot. And for some empathy with accountants, they're busy, they're overwhelmed, like it's a hard business. Still, I don't think it's right. And I see at Sunlight Tax a lot of what
I help people through in my consulting calls with people is clients who've been ghosted by an accountant. They had some help and then it disappeared, right? And then they're sort of stuck. So one of the things I've been going through in my own business is revamping my main offering. because I really want to meet people in the moment that we're in right now where
You might be feeling a little nervous about your business. You really want to make sure it is strong and built well to weather a storm. And you want to make sure that you've got a setup that you can really trust. And a lot of times when I'm talking to people, when I am helping them through problems, these are people who actually have an accountant, but they actually have a relationship where they
Feel uncomfortable asking questions, or they ask questions and they get answers that don't feel either respectful or like they make sense. So the accountant maybe isn't taking time to explain things in plain English. or maybe they just don't get back to you, right? You send an email, maybe you send a follow-up email, but months go by and you hear nothing. And of course, meanwhile, you've got quarterly tax payments coming up, you have
the extension deadline just passed. So there's things you need on a timeline. and it's really frustrating to think you're covered and then realize that you're being ghosted. So in the spirit of spooky Halloween, I thought I would bring you today two ghost stories. because
These are two examples of clients I had in my new two-day business intensive who had both been ghosted in one form or another by an accountant, kind of left hanging. And that this is the reason that I built this intensive is to really have a concentrated dose of time with me where I am walking you through actually doing your setup.
and sitting there with you as you're implementing it so that as you hit snags you can ask me. I am right there. So I want to tell you these two ghost stories. so yeah pretend you're at a campfire. Picture yourself roasting marshmallows and here we go. So the first client I'm gonna use some relevant
Business details, but I'm going to change the names of these people. So the first client is Andy. she has a retail and wholesale business selling handmade self-care products. It's a very, very cool business. It's had moments where it's done really well. It's had quieter moments. So it's been kind of in existence actually for a long time. And what had happened to Andy is
For one reason or another, at some point she was advised to form an S corporation. Now, if you don't know, an S corporation is a tax entity, it's a tax status that you can elect with the IRS. And if you have the right circumstances, I cannot stress enough that you have to have those circumstances, it can be a great idea and it can save you money on self-employment tax, right? So there can be real tax savings that comes with an S corporation.
But doing the math to see if that savings is going to actually be relevant to you is so important. And I also find so frequently with clients that they get set up with an S Corporation, or maybe they even do it on their own and then abandoned. They are not told how much additional administrative burden comes with an S Corp. And let me warn you, it's substantial.
and with that administrative burden, you probably can't do it on your own because it really does require some accounting background to be able to do an S corporation tax return. and it also requires a higher level of bookkeeping that is more locked down than the kind of bookkeeping you can do when you simply have a Schedule C, right?
So I find a lot of people get
Put into an S corporation, and then the accountant stops responding to emails, doesn't tell the client that they have to set up payroll and just walks away. And now this person starts getting into trouble because they don't have all the pieces in place and they can no longer reach this accountant. So this had happened to Andy. and not only that, but this made the accounting side of her business feel absolutely overwhelming. She was feeling like
She had this, you know, new tax return, the S-Corp tax return due in March every year on top of her personal income tax return. And she had trouble getting a hold of this accountant. Her bookkeeping was not set up in the best possible way. She was trying to do it on her own. She really wanted a business of the scale where she could be doing these things on her own, but she was in an entity where you really can't do that, right?
and so she didn't want to pay for the accounting services that are pretty substantial that come along with an S Corporation, and she didn't have a responsive accountant. So she was feeling so overwhelmed by this that she really was doubting whether it was worth it for her to even keep running this business. This to me is tragic. So she joined my two-day business intensive and
The way that I have these structured is that when you join, you fill out an onboarding that really tells me the full story of what's going on with you, what you're feeling concerned about, where you're at, how long you've been doing it. And then we have a one-on-one session. So it's private, it's just us. And we go through your initial questions and talk through the situation that is the most pressing, right? And from there.
We can do a lot of solving right off the bat, right in that first one-on-one session. Then you go into the two-day intensive where we build out your systems, and you've already solved some of the biggest problems by the time you're in the two days, and then you're sitting with me and we know each other very well by the time you're in the intensive, and you are implementing those things.
And as you hit snags or have questions, you are sitting with me for two full days, just asking me every single question that comes up as you've built, right? It is the opposite of being ghosted. It is having your hand held through setting up the stuff that you feel is scary, right? And so what we learned, what Andy realized here is that the S-Corp was just way more than she needed.
She actually was running a business that would be a lot wiser to be formed without the S-Corp, right? So we talked about how to unwind the S-Corp, go back to a Schedule C, which she was eligible to do. And she felt so much relief setting up a Schedule C business. And it allowed her to keep this really good business that she does on top of other work.
It allowed her to keep it and to have the bookkeeping and the tax preparation and the tax documentation get down to a size that felt manageable again. cannot stress enough how wonderful this is because what it allowed was her to keep the business open, right? She was feeling so overwhelmed by the accounting side and the non responsiveness, like how much admin there was and how non responsive her accountant was, she was gonna close the business.
So she was able to dramatically simplify her accounting, her bookkeeping, her record keeping, her tax preparation. So she kept the business open. So to me, this is a huge win and I feel really excited for her moving forward. I'll give you another haunting ghost story, which is I'm changing the name here, but my client Kai.
So Kai was in different cohort of my business setup intensive. And he was in a position that a lot of people are in that I work with, which is that he wanted to you know, he's been working for a long time. He's not 21. He's not fresh out of school. He's got a lot of really great experience and has
Started a business in Kai's case, it's a photography business, selling really beautiful prints, right? And there's demand, and he's very, very talented. So this is a really has a lot of potential, but he has felt so underprepared on the numbers side and fearful about getting into tax trouble. There's some specific issues regarding sales tax that he was really concerned about. and
He really wanted to make sure that the setup of the photography business was locked in so that it was totally tax compliant and he wouldn't end up getting into trouble with his taxes. And what that unlocked for him was the ability to actually go hard, to actually push in the business and start really focusing in on making sales.
He had been holding himself back, despite the fact that this photography business has actually existed for a while now. He hadn't been promoting it. He hadn't been doing any marketing. He hadn't been reaching out to people. He hadn't really been trying to make sales because he was so tentative and nervous about his setup that he felt like he might actually get in trouble. He didn't trust it, right? So this is one of the key problems that I love to solve.
And that we solved together in the intensive. So we started out with a one-on-one together where we talked through this sales tax issue that was worrying him. we got it resolved about what he actually needed to do, and we also just identified that during the co-working time in the intensive, he would be able to right there with me in the Zoom with him do that setup. And so if anything felt
unclear as he was setting it up, I would be there to answer questions, right? So the thing that feels so wonderful about this is that when Kai went through the business setup intensive with me, he built out those elements of the business to a point where he felt he trusted it. Again, he really, really felt clear on what he needed to do, how he got it set up.
And now he feels that he can go out and actually market, actually make sales in the business because now he trusts it. I also want to mention that Kai too had a ghosting story from an accountant. he had tried to get help before, right? what happens a lot of times, he paid a lot of money to an accountant to try and get help.
Bookkeeping, but this accountant was just not practiced or patient in explaining how things work. he was happy to take Kai's money. And he, know, Kai spent two to three thousand dollars just trying to get some bookkeeping set up, but Kai really felt that he was doing all the work and he was like, Why am I paying two or three thousand dollars to this guy? And he's not actually answering any questions. I'm still doing all the work.
And when I walk away, he doesn't answer my questions and I don't know if it actually is set up appropriately, right? So this was super, super frustrating. He was actually at a point he wasn't sure he could trust me because he didn't know. he just had, you know, had this bad experience, this bad taste in his mouth from accounting experiences of the past. So I feel really proud that we walked through.
This setup for his new photography business, and that he's coming out of it feeling really confident and knowing that his sales tax were set up correctly, that his tax documentation is set up correctly, that he is documenting his expense categories in a smart way where he's not missing anything. And now he can go full force into expanding that business. To me, that's such a huge victory. And I think.
It's something I see in a lot of people where you don't trust the setup of your business. So you kind of don't go all in. And who doesn't need sales right now? Who isn't in a place where you want to go out and you just want to be able to bring in the money, right? What I have found is that when you start taking the business seriously, getting the setup that you trust, right? When you can trust it, you can then go.
Do your magic and bring in the sales, right? When you take your business more seriously, your business takes you more seriously. And comes back to you. It loves you back because you now feel that freedom. It kind of unlocks a psychological component, which I think is really important, where you actually want to make sales.
you don't appear to everybody like you are hesitating, like you're unsure, like you're not really making an offer. You're not really inviting them in. It actually opens up that channel and you feel like, okay, I can do it now. So what I have found is time and time again, when you get the setup right and you know you can trust it and you're walking in with confidence, you start making the sales. So these are my two ghosting stories for you this
October season.
And if you've experienced anything similar to this, if you have a ghosting story from an accountant or a bookkeeper, I would be very interested to hear it. I am here to help you solve the setup issues that you feel in your business. I am a tax professional and nothing makes me happier than getting to know your business really well.
Bringing you into a very small intimate cohort of people who are delightful human beings doing ethical work, who are together learning how to build a setup that is trustworthy and strong. So you have any interest in this two-day business intensive, it's a really great program. I have been working on it for the last half a year.
It runs really smoothly. I'm really proud of it. And lot of it is about just wanting to counteract that ghosting feeling that a lot of people that I work with have experienced and really hold your hand as you build out the tax tracking and the setup of your business so that you know you can trust it.
What we do in the intensive is we get you a setup where you're tracking every deduction, including a lot of the deductions that people miss. You get a receipt system which we build within your first hour in the intensive, a receipt system that runs on its own in the background. So you actually don't have to ever think about receipts again. We add a tax smart layer.
into your existing bookkeeping so that you are tracking things in a smarter way that simplifies your tax preparation at tax time. A lot of people find that they end up recalculating whole entire categories going back a whole year at tax time because there's some special tax rules that allow you to take some deductions
If they're bigger than another one, but you have to know both calculations in order to know which way is more beneficial to you. So there's a tax smart layer we layer into your existing bookkeeping that makes tax time really feel easy and simple. Plus, I'm a tax expert, so I really, really lock in on making the tax side simplified. We also I teach you how to calculate your next estimated quarterly tax payment.
When you're making money, and the whole point here is to unlock that free feeling of being able to bring in the sales. I teach you how to pay your estimated quarterly taxes and how to make the calculation and how to adjust it when your income changes. Because this is something that is really difficult when you're a solo business owner. Your income may be up and it may be down, it's not steady.
The way it is if you have a job that gets the same paycheck every two weeks. So quarterly taxes are really important. They are the law. You have to pay them. But knowing how to adjust them when your income changes can feel very challenging. So we walk through that in this program and you will understand how to calculate your estimates. By the way, this is something accountants charge a lot of money for, and having that power back in your own court is really empowering.
I also give you clear answers on entity choices, so legal entity, tax entity, licensing, insurance, sales tax, whether you need an LLC or not, and if an S-corp is appropriate for you now, later, or never, right? So we do a lot of answering questions surrounding.
If and when an S-Corp might be appropriate. And it is not a good fit for everyone, so it's very important to get that guidance when it comes to an S Corp decision. You also get two private sessions with me, one before the program and one after, so that we're really making sure you're with me for the full two days and asking me questions the whole time. But you also have two private sessions so that we can talk about any.
numbers that feel especially sensitive or situations that are sensitive. These are totally private. and we can do some individual work as well. And just make sure that there are no snags hanging you up. So I do want to be clear that this program is not tax return preparation. It's not done for you bookkeeping. it's not going to set up your bookkeeping
system software from scratch. but I do give referrals to really excellent responsive people who can help you if you need those referrals.
But what it does do is it really helps you lock in the the day-to-day admin, know that you have the right elements in place and know that you can trust it because you do the setup over a two-day period with me, tax professional who has gotten to know you very well, and I'm guiding you through answering your questions as you go. So it's a really wonderful program. if you're interested in it, I have
A cohort that's open in November with spots available. Spots are beginning to fill, but if you're interested, you can go to sunlighttax.com/intensive and join the November cohort. It's happening on November 16th and 18th. So it's Monday and Wednesday, November 16th and 18th, 11 to 5 East Coast time, which is 8 to 2 West Coast time.
there is a meet and greet cocktail hour the Friday before that, which is just a chance to get to know the peers in your cohort. And I think it's really valuable to do that as well. So if you're interested, sunlighttax.com/intensive. And if you're interested in having a chat with me because you are thinking about it, but you're not quite sure it's a good fit for you, you can send me a DM.
on Instagram @sunlighttax. If you just mention the word chat, I'll send you a link to book a short 15-minute call with me where you can tell me about your situation and we can talk through if it's a good fit or not. so you get a sense of if it's gonna do exactly what you need. Okay. So send me a DM and mention the word chat for a link to book a call with me where we can talk through your situation.
And if you know that it sounds good and you want to have one of those nine spots that are available in the November intensive, you can go to sunlighttax.com/intensive. I will mention if you happen to be a coach, a wellness professional, or a therapist, I do have a special cohort in December for just coaches and therapists and wellness practitioners. So that is also an item you might want to notice if you're a coach or a therapist.
But for everybody else, November is a really great time to take advantage of some year-end items in your taxes because it gets you a little more money than if you wait until January. I'm really excited to talk to you and I hope you do not experience a ghosting in your setup, in your business setup. And the purpose here is I want to be with you every step of the way. So
I will talk to you next time, sunlighttax.com/intensive, or if you want to have a quick chat with me about your situation, just DM me on Instagram and mention the word chat. I'm @sunlighttax. I will talk to you next time. Bye.