

Review my startup: sanetax.com - A real Tax Professional prepares your taxes - SriniK
http://sanetax.com

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ABrandt
The value proposition is extremely compelling (especially for someone like me
who is still procrastinating filing...). Take a picture and have a
professional do the work?! Yes, please.

That being said, I need to know more before committing. Who are these
professionals? How much will it cost me? Am I guaranteed the max allowable
refund? I applaud you for bringing simplicity to a field as complicated as
taxes, but the devil is still in the details.

Overall looks great though! Let me know if I can help test at all, emails in
my profile.

~~~
SriniK
Thanks for the feedback.

Yes most of the last few months I have spent on is getting tax agents to sign
up.

. Tax Agents currently using the Sanetax are independent tax professionals and
EAs(Enrolled agents). Some have 14yrs of experience in the industry.

. Depending on how complicated your tax filing tax agents tend to charge
anywhere from $40 to $200. Again, this is between tax agent and customer to
agree upfront.

. As a customer you can talk to them and feel comfortable before agreeing to
go forward - just like what you would do for any purchase. At any stage,
customer can back off from the agent if he/she is not satisfied. We can assign
a new agent.

~~~
r00fus
You might want to pitch some distilled form of this summary on your page.

It's also the first question that popped into my head when I looked at your
site (which otherwise, is pretty good).

~~~
SriniK
Thanks. I will have that included on the site.

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billpaetzke
SaneTax is a good idea, yes. But remote accountants do exist.

I have an accountant who handles everything remotely. I live in Los Angeles
and he lives in small-town, Nebraska. I met him once when he did a tour of the
country to meet clients and drum up new business.

Here's my process:

1) I download a PDF worksheet from his website.

2) I scan all my documents and fill out the worksheet.

3) I send it over https to his LeapFile account.

4) We talk on the phone for a few minutes. He asks a few questions to make
sure we're "on the same page."

5) He e-files for me.

6) If I have a refund coming, I get it direct deposited. If not, then I pay
with EFTPS and CA web pay.

If I want tax advice, I can ask him. If I want to start a business, he can
help out. If I get audited, he can defend me. All without me being there.

Another nice project would be to make a directory of accountants who can
handle the whole tax process remotely.

~~~
r00fus
Your accountant sounds great. Now how would I have known about him?

SaneTax aims to be this marketplace between tax preparers and accountants.
It's a good model.

Now, the question that I have is, how are the accountants verified and how do
I know I (as a preparer) am dealing with someone I can trust?

~~~
billpaetzke
_Now how would I have known about him?_

Right. That's why I said, _another nice project would be to make a directory
of accountants who can handle the whole tax process remotely._

But maybe there's no business model in that. Enter SaneTax.

~~~
SriniK
Eventually, we will open up the tax professional directory. So that you as a
customer can choose your own agent. We already have the code in place for it.

~~~
r00fus
I'd recommend looking at how ServiceMagic does it. They choose and list 3
professionals (which are chosen by area, which adds an artificial funnel to a
natural one). If I want more, I can request more, but often 3 is just right to
compare prices/rates and professional knowledge/fit.

I would strongly recommend this approach if you aren't already doing it (have
yet to sign up).

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mikepmalai
Couple more thoughts:

1\. The first thing a user does should not be to register. I should at least
be able to see how many tax preparers are in my area and their profiles before
registering. Do the preparers have a linkedin or yelp page with endorsements?
Is there someone in my FB network that has used this person or liked their
services? Nothing compels me to enroll.

2\. I think the key to all this is helping tax preparers find new customers by
leveraging their existing customer base. Tax prep is a word of mouth business
and your goal should be to digitize the word of mouth to maximize reach of
potential new customers. For example, make it easy for customers to endorse
tax preparers by "liking" their sanetax profile,etc.

Your sales pitch needs to be: "By using SaneTax, you can leverage your
existing customer's social network to find new customers." or something like
that.

~~~
SriniK
We already have #1 implemented in the code, just that we haven't enabled it.
We will be adding this once we have considerable number of tax agents on the
system.

I was solving my own problem with running around the tax professional. Thanks
for the pitch.

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markklarich
As an accountant and tax lawyer who works 100% remotely with clients, I'd like
to chime in. I definitely think that there is a place for a service that can
help people find accountants and lawyers. The average person has no way of
knowing how to choose -- what makes a good preparer/counselor? How much should
they cost? How available should they be? This is the obvious part of what
could make Sanetax very helpful.

The less obvious part to folks who aren't in the "industry" is that
accountants and lawyers really struggle with technology issues. Technology is
not their primary skill and yet tax preparation has become very tech
intensive. Add to this all the issues around privacy. There aren't any good
solutions that have been widely adopted in these communities for handling
confidential material online--i.e. your social security number.

Speaking for myself, I use Magic Vortex where I can for file transfer, but
have only recently transitioned to using encrypted pdf's in emails and have
had considerable problems with client confusion with the files. I cannot
imagine the extra technical support that I might have to provide while trying
to use encrypted email, even though it's totally warranted. Perhaps Sanetax
can help with these issues.

I would also like to strongly agree fully with fourply's post. The entire
industry is not as simple as it might appear from the outside. Like most
things we live with these days, regulations are multiplying even as we speak,
and they vary widely from state to state. Accountants and lawyers have to meet
restrictive federal and state regulations, including around how we get clients
in the first place. Hopefully Sanetax will find ways to work with all these
rules.

~~~
SriniK
Thanks for comments.

Yes it is so true about how inconvenient it is with the whole pdf encryption
and complicated technology in general. Speaking of attachments, we are also
the makers of <http://www.getdropandlock.com> \- which did fine but still lot
of inconvenience with remembering passwords and everything.

If you attended IRS Live March 30th session, it was clear from the session
that we are going to get more regulations. However, we also expect regulations
should improve IRS efforts in protecting consumers.

With the Sanetax, we would like to fix the convenience part of taking an
expert's advice in taxes.

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fourply
as a tax attorney and someone with 4 years experience as a volunteer at an IRS
VITA site, i am not sure that i'm entirely comfortable with the idea - but
maybe i am missing something.

first of all, there are preparer regulations that require - well, lots of
things. this system could run afoul of those quickly and easily.

secondly, the interview process is crucial for me. it can be driven by a form,
but it's extremely important to talk with folks about what happened during the
taxable year to identify not only potential pitfalls and ensure that
everything gets the right treatment, but also to talk about planning
opportunities that can save them big $$$ down the road.

for people that are foolish enough to go to H & R Block anyway, maybe this
would be a valuable thing - but it's not a cookie-cutter process and treating
it as such can result in serious fines and/or jail time for taxpayers and
preparers.

my thoughts: make sure you find yourself a tax law badass to make sure you're
doing things right. it will be complicated, and costly - but if you don't get
it right out of the gate it's not even worth doing.

~~~
billpaetzke
Could you expand on or quickly summarize why going to H&R Block is foolish?

(I don't use them. Just curious).

~~~
fourply
They hire folks with no education or experience, train them for a week, and
turn them loose - generally paying $9/hr plus a percentage of fees they
generate. The majority of their business comes from taking advantage of poor
people - they prepare a return that takes me 6-9 minutes, offer a 'refund
anticipation loan' that gets people instant gratification, and charge them
$200-$400. Eff everything about that. I am thrilled to see the RAL on the way
out and look for VITA sites to become much more heavily utilized soon!

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charlieflowers
I think a major value proposition you could offer (eventually) is ratings of
tax professionals. More than just rating though. For example, if someone owns
several rental properties, certain Tax Preparers specialize in that, whereas
most would be out of their element. So a Tagging system might come in handy.
You could tag your return with "Real Estate", or "Home office", or "Moved
several times", etc. Perhaps, if sanetax has access to the completed returns,
this tagging could be automated. Even if not automated, you can easily
restrict the tagging/voting to people who actually used the Tax Preparer,
thereby mitigating the problem of fake reviews.

The end result is real, reliable information about which Tax Preparers
specialize in what I need. That would be awesome.

~~~
SriniK
Great suggestion. We will open up the directory once considerable number of
agents are part of the network. We should add specialties part of the
individual tax agent page/blurb. We could automate the whole rating system as
well.

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PidGin128
Is anybody aware of a similar service for finding (traffic) lawyers? Searching
for such is unpleasant (especially in a different locality).

Edit: I've now signed up to the service, as I've procrastinated equally with
my taxes, however- I still don't know what to do. I appreciate the goal is to
match taxed/preparer, but I'm not sure what forms are appropriate, which makes
uploading them difficult.

I see there is a progress indicator to communicate how far along the preparer
is with the submitted paperwork, maybe a similar guide for what to submit, and
what might be missing? (Also possibly augmented by the preparer if the site
doesn't want to become a guide?)

~~~
SriniK
Great! Our support person should have sent you an email. If you haven't
received an email from us feel free to send a message to srini -at-
sanetax.com

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ryanhuff
I signed up, and was expecting a very different workflow.

IMO, asking me to upload my tax documents without having chosen a tax
professional feels backwards. I want to know who is going to be looking at my
tax documents. The way things work now, it feels like I'm sending my docs up
for bidding. I'm sure that's not what is going on, but that's the perception.

Perhaps some general questions up front to help properly route the customer to
the right tax professional, then allow for a match, and then finally, once the
customer is paired with a tax professional, present the rest of the features.

~~~
SriniK
Yea, please don't upload until tax agent is finalized and you feel good to go.

Coding point of view, we should have created a wizard kinda flow. Will fix it
in next revision. Thanks.

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cullenking
I like the concept, but the domain is a bet iffy. I read it as "sanitax",
which might be misconstrued. Other than than, I like the idea. I would use an
actual tax preparer if it wasn't for calling and/or driving.

~~~
SriniK
:) Supposed to be "sane tax" - Bringing back sanity in taxes. Signup as a
customer or send an email(email in profile) if you like to discuss.

~~~
kwis
Just as a data point, I think it sounds like a feminine hygiene or household
cleaning product.

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zzeroparticle
Is this service for the 85-90% of people who have simple returns consisting of
a W-2, a few 1099s, and a 1098? My question is how it'll handle issues like
multi-state tax returns, oodles of K-1s, and tracking the basis for those, and
figuring out stuff like foreign tax credits? Would the designated Preparer
know to ask such questions and wholly handle everything on their end?

(I'm guessing that for those complex issues, you'd still stick to a live
accountant, and this service isn't geared towards that particular segment of
the population.)

~~~
SriniK
Thanks for the comment.

There are two models a customer can use.

1\. Stick with your existing tax professional:

Ask your tax professional to signup as an agent. Free for him/her and then you
can work with them through the app. For their own customers, agents can start
using the service immediately.

2\. Let us assign a tax agent:

Tell us more about your requirements, we can assign agents who is suitable for
you.

All agents are mandated to list their PTIN number and phone numbers so that
you can call and talk to them.

So anytime, if you are not satisfied, we can drop you from the customer list
of a particular tax professional.

Hope above answered your concerns.

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r00fus
I can see why tax professionals could be threatened/worried by this.

Effectively someone like myself living in a state with a high Cost of living
can outsource to someone in say, IL (who may have CA tax knowledge but now
lives elswhere) who would charge much less than the CA-based local accountant.

It's also a killer business plan for the marketplace vendor (ie, SaneTax). Who
would have known that Amazon could have become such a giant by selling _books
online_?

~~~
SriniK
Thanks a lot for kind words. Well, we think that we are a great asset to tax
professionals. They can use SaneTax as the CRM/support service and improve the
customer satisfaction and get new customers.

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acabal
Is this only for personal taxes, or can my very simple corporation benefit
from this? Right now I have an accountant in my home state handling my
corporate taxes, but he's not very internet-savvy so things like secure file
transfers and even timely email replies are beyond him. I'm looking for a
remote accountant for my state that can handle my very simple corporate return
--but it looks like Sanetax is only for personal returns? Please correct me if
I'm wrong.

~~~
SriniK
Sure. You can use Sanetax for any type of tax situation. You can request your
agent to signup <https://app.sanetax.com/agentsignup>.

If he can use email, he should be able to use <http://sanetax.com> without any
problems.

If you share your state, I can see if any one of our existing tax agents can
help you out.

~~~
acabal
My corporation is based in IL. Ideally I'm looking to simply change agents, as
while mine is competent, he's expensive and not good at remoting. I work
exclusively from remote locations so it's essential that my accountant be
comfortable with that. How would I go about getting a price quote for a basic
S-Corp return in IL via Sanetax?

~~~
SriniK
Can you email your contact info srini -at- sanetax.com

If you are already signed up at sanetax.com our support person should be
contacting you soon.

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mikepmalai
Have you looked at Snap Tax? <http://turbotax.intuit.com/snaptax/mobile>

If I'm doing a simple filing, what is the value proposition of paying $100s
for a tax professional using sanetax when I can use snaptax for $20 and submit
right on my phone?

~~~
SriniK
Great question. We get this many times.

Two things: 1\. Who does the taxes? With snaptax, you still have to file your
own taxes. Go through the questionnaire, go through the numbers and select
right options.

With sanetax, you are letting an expert handle your taxes. Regardless how
simple or how complicated are your taxes.

2\. Expenses: With sanetax if you have simple returns, I have seen agents
charging the customer $40. With snaptax, you need to spend both ~$20 and your
time to complete taxes.

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spking
Typo in the first Agent FAQ: "How can Sanetax help my bussiness?"

<http://sanetax.com/faqsagents.html>

~~~
SriniK
Thanks. Fixed.

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firejdl
The "Take a picture, upload, tax agent files your returns" sold me. Too bad I
already filed my taxes.

~~~
SriniK
Well may be your friends or next year :)

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alex3t
I got Access Restricted page What is mean exactly? Yes, I can fill captcha for
access but page dont looks friendly, specially I sure that my machine clean
from viruses.

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SriniK
Sanetax is a service where a real Tax Professional prepares your taxes with
the convenience of online interaction.

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startupcomment
Kudos to sanetax, but my earnest hope is that tax reform will abolish the use
case for such a service.

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prakster
I love it. Time to disrupt the status quo.

