Schultz & Company, Certified Public Accountants

10/26/2026

The IRS Has Become an Increasingly Expensive Burden on American Taxpayers — Even When the Taxpayer Is Right.

As a CPA, one of the most frustrating developments in our profession is the extraordinary amount of time now spent correcting mistakes made by the Internal Revenue Service.

This is no longer simply a matter of preparing accurate tax returns and helping clients comply with the law. Increasingly, CPAs are forced to become full-time troubleshooters for a federal agency that sends automated notices, demands payments, assesses penalties, and sometimes threatens collection action over matters that should have been resolved long before a notice was issued.

And this is not merely anecdotal.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the IRS ended the 2025 filing season with 7.6 million pieces of taxpayer correspondence awaiting action, including approximately 4.9 million that were already overdue.

The American Institute of CPAs reported that more than 3 million automated CP53E notices were issued during the 2026 filing season, creating significant confusion for taxpayers and tax professionals.

The IRS has even publicly acknowledged sending balance-due notices to taxpayers who had already paid their taxes.

Consider the absurdity of this situation:

The IRS can generate a computer-produced demand for payment almost instantly. But when that demand is incorrect, taxpayers and their CPAs can spend months submitting documentation, making telephone calls, writing letters, and attempting to convince the government to correct its own records.

Meanwhile, the taxpayer faces uncertainty, potential penalties, interest assessments, and sometimes threats of collection enforcement.

Who pays for this bureaucratic inefficiency?

The American taxpayer.

Every hour a CPA spends correcting an IRS mistake is an hour that could have been devoted to tax planning, business advisory services, financial reporting, or other productive work. Instead, businesses and individuals absorb the costs of correcting problems they did not create.

The IRS should be held to the same standard of accuracy, responsiveness, and accountability it demands from taxpayers and tax professionals.

Automation without accountability is not modernization. It is simply a faster way to produce problems that someone else must pay to resolve.

Taxpayers deserve an IRS that is as efficient at correcting its own mistakes as it is at demanding payment from everyone else.

— Schultz & Company, PC, CPAs

10/14/2026

There is a debate on the effectiveness of DOGE. Like all good bean counters we are extremely selective on who and what we believe. Obviously there is a lot of fraud waste and abuse. Based on the numbers it is true that in fact if Fraud, Waste and Abuse was a government department, it would be the 5th largest department in the US.

So what about DOGE? According to the trusted CATO institute DOGE achieved a historic reduction in the federal workforce, eliminating approximately 271,000 jobs (9%) in less than 10 months, but failed to reduce overall federal spending, which actually increased by $248 billion compared to 2024.

The fundamental problem is that federal employee salaries represent only a small fraction of government expenditures. The overwhelming majority of spending is driven by entitlement programs and other obligations that cannot be meaningfully reduced without congressional action.

Bottom line: DOGE successfully reduced the size of the federal bureaucracy but demonstrated that cutting government employees alone will not solve Washington’s spending problem. Meaningful fiscal reform requires Congress (read that part again) to address the programs responsible for the vast majority of federal expenditures.

10/08/2026

Survey finds 90% of tax pros report client confusion over filing extensions
A September survey by the National Association of Tax Professionals (NATP) has found widespread confusion among taxpayers about federal income tax filing extensions as the October 15 deadline approaches. According to the poll, 90% of tax professionals said misunderstandings about extensions are common. Nearly half (48%) reported that clients mistakenly believe extensions provide additional time to pay taxes, while 23% said clients assume penalties and interest do not apply after requesting an extension. The survey also highlighted documentation challenges, with 59% of responses identifying missing income documents or incomplete business, rental, and side-income records as obstacles to completing returns. Meanwhile, 56% of practitioners said receiving outstanding documents was their biggest priority, while 20% needed clients to answer unresolved questions. NATP emphasized that filing extensions do not extend the original April tax payment deadline and urged taxpayers to submit outstanding information promptly to avoid last-minute complications.

10/06/2026

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it." ~ Albert Einstein

10/02/2026

Official 2026 Community Voting Awards Platform for Wichita Falls, TX. Where the community votes for their favorites every year.

09/28/2026

Much like Canadians are experiencing now, we might hear a giant sucking sound coming out of California in November. The claim that high-income earners simply “don’t pay their fair share” is much harder to square with the actual tax data than political rhetoric suggests. More importantly, its an absurd argument with no data to support it. For those that believe the rhetoric I'm going to wager math grades were really bad.

According to a recent CATO Institute article, the top 10% of earners pay nearly two-thirds of all federal taxes. The top 0.1% face an average effective federal tax rate of 33.4%, compared with 12.3% for the middle 60%.

And the proposed solution—an annual wealth tax (that is actually contrary to the established formula under 16th amendment that clearly identifies income as "accession to wealth, clearly realized") that has already been tried repeatedly overseas. Most OECD countries that imposed one eventually repealed it (read that part again) because it produced relatively little revenue, encouraged avoidance and capital flight, created enormous valuation problems, and became riddled with exemptions.

The central misconception is treating wealth as if it were a giant checking account. Much of the wealth held by high-net-worth Americans consists of ownership in businesses—the factories, technology, equipment and companies that employ people and generate economic activity.

So the serious tax-policy question is not whether wealthy Americans should pay tax. They already pay a very large share of it. The question is whether imposing another tax on productive capital actually raises meaningful revenue—or simply encourages people to move capital, restructure assets, reduce investment and spend enormous amounts avoiding the tax. History suggests you will just hear a giant sucking sound of capital and jobs going elsewhere.

The international record presented in this article suggests that distinction matters a great deal. Read the entire article from the Independent and overwhelmingly accurate CATO Institute here:

Wealth taxes raise little revenue while adding complexity, driving capital flight, and slowing growth.

09/27/2026

House Committee Advances Bill to Restore Full Gambling Loss Tax Deduction
Legislation that would restore the full federal tax deduction for gambling losses has advanced from the House Ways and Means Committee and now awaits consideration by the full House. The FAIR BET Act, sponsored by Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), would prevent a provision reducing the deductible amount of gambling losses to 90% from taking effect on January 1st, 2027, and restore the previous 100% deduction when calculating federal income tax liability. The proposal was attached to the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act and has 25 co-sponsors, as well as support from gaming companies and industry organizations. Similar bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the Senate, but any change would require approval from both chambers and the president’s signature before becoming law.

09/22/2026

Tax and economics have always fascinated me. After 30 years as a bean counter, one thing I have consistently questioned is the assumption that higher tax rates automatically produce higher tax revenues.

The chart below compares tax revenue collected from individuals and businesses on a per-resident basis across the G7 countries. What stands out is that the United States, despite having the lowest top marginal individual income tax rate in the group, collects more tax revenue per resident than any other G7 country.

The comparison is interesting:

• Japan — top marginal rate of approximately 56%, yet the lowest tax revenue collected per resident
• Italy — approximately 43%
• United Kingdom, France, and Germany — approximately 45%
• Canada — approximately 55%
• United States — 37%, yet the highest tax revenue collected per resident

Ultimately, governments collect taxes from economic activity. The size of the tax base matters just as much as—and often more than—the rate imposed on it.

Makes you think a little.

09/19/2026

In a previous post, I discussed who is paying their “fair share” of taxes, including proposals to tax billionaires on unrealized gains in their stock portfolios.

I have consistently opposed taxing unrealized appreciation. Texas property taxes take a similar absurd approach by taxing increases in property value before a sale, but that is an argument for another day.

There is also a serious constitutional question. In Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co. (1955), the Supreme Court defined income as:

“Undeniable accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion.”

The key point is realization. If you buy stock for $1 million and its value rises to $2 million, you have an economic gain on paper, but you have not realized it unless you sell or experience another taxable event.

In Moore v. United States (2024), the Court upheld a tax on shareholders’ previously undistributed foreign-corporation earnings. But the corporation had already earned and realized that income. The Court did not hold that Congress may generally tax unrealized appreciation in an individual’s stock portfolio and expressly left that question unresolved.

Not only is taxing unrealized gains absurd and, as the Cato Institute put it, an economically destructive policy that would severely damage the U.S. economy, but it would likely be dead on arrival at the Supreme Court.

09/17/2026

Stop buying the argument the high income earners don't "pay their fair share." That is political rhetoric given to ignorant people who will repeat it to other ignorant people.