20 Years and Counting
Seeing trends with BNA Income Tax Planner.
Much has changed since Bernadette H. Schopfer, Director of Taxation for Maier Markey & Justic LLP, launched her accounting career in 1988. The Berlin Wall is long gone. A gallon of gasoline costs considerably more than $0.98. Parachute pants inexplicably fell out of fashion.
But one thing has remained the same for Schopfer: She has always relied on BNA Income Tax™ Planner to meet the tax planning needs of her clients.
"I have been personally using BNA Income Tax Planner since my days at Ernst & Young in the early '90s," says Schopfer. "When I joined Maier Markey & Justic in 1995, I quickly introduced it to my colleagues here."
As the firm more than doubled in size from 30 to 70 employees over the ensuing 17 years, Schopfer has come to rely even more heavily on BNA Income Tax Planner. Based in White Plains, New York, Maier Markey & Justic primarily serves small- and medium-sized businesses in the New York City metropolitan area. As the fortunes of these clients have fluctuated along with the health of the overall economy, the ability to provide multi-year projections has become increasingly important to Schopfer and her colleagues.
"Not only can we prepare tax projections for the current year, but BNA Income Tax Planner also allows us to model multiple years so that we can see the trends from year to year," says Schopfer. "This provides a great perspective and helps us determine whether there were any mistakes in our assumptions."
Software For All Seasons
When preparing the personal tax returns of business owners, Schopfer uses BNA Income Tax Planner to model multiple case scenarios, such as varying Roth IRA conversion amounts. And, as conditions change over the course of the year, she logs in to calculate revised estimated tax payments or balances that will be due when the returns or extensions are filed in April so she can keep her clients apprised of their upcoming tax obligations. "BNA Income Tax Planner allows me to manipulate information with ease and efficiency; it's so incredibly reliable and always up to date that it really makes my life a lot easier," says Schopfer.
But the one quality that Schopfer values above all is accuracy. "I know that as long as the assumptions I'm using have integrity, I can trust this program to do it right," she says. "And that's a big deal. Because when my clients give me reliable information, I owe it to them to give them accurate results."
