Why I charge for tax credit prep

I used to work a full-time job where I was in charge of prepping tax credits. I was paid extra to do so, then when I went out on my own I just started doing it without charging extra. 3 years later I don’t do that anymore. Why? The age old truth:

Time is money.

As someone who works in production as well as accounting I am always startled by the number of emails I receive, months and even years after I have worked on a project. It’s bananas how much work people think I should be doing for free.

After doing the tax credit prep as a “part of my process” for the last 3 years I realized one reality: people don’t want you to prep the credit. They want you to prepare it, audit it, and answer questions for the next 6 months until the tax credit is paid out. The problem with that becomes there is only so much time in a day and I only have so many people working at any given time. Depending on the current workload we just may not be able to take on additional hours worth of work unpaid. When we are paid we can add it to our work schedule and bring on additional help if needed. This allows the turnaround to be faster and for us to actually be able to deliver things on time.

We want to do the best job possible and many times that means valuing the work we are doing and attaching a price to it. This will actually give our clients a better experience instead of waiting for me to fit it around my current schedule.