Phoebe Roberts

During tax season, Phoebe Roberts, CPA and Enrolled Agent, burns up the leaderboard with her frequent responses to tax questions from her fellow tax preparers. And even off season, she's no slouch. This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows this high achiever, who graduated from Yale and scored a gold medal for her stellar results on her state CPA exam.

Phoebe's Main Job

Although we're impressed most with Phoebe's awesome record on the Intuit accounting community, her main job is handling tax and software issues at Roberts & Associates, CPA, where Phoebe works side-by-side with mom Leanne Roberts. This powerhouse team handles both accounting and tax chores for a wide array of small and even micro-businesses for their service area. Phoebe says most of what she does is help the firm's clients make sense of the world by using tax returns as the pretext for a deeper conversation.

Phoebe's Avocation as Community Poster

Although we know Phoebe best from our accountant community, Phoebe also posts on TaxTalk. She says she gets a lot out these activities.

Positive Contribution. Phoebe does not see her community work as in conflict with her main job but rather as a benefit to her clients.

"These [community] activities make me a better tax return preparer and a better advisor to my clients by giving me access to hundreds of other people's brains," says Phoebe. "Even within the narrow specialization of tax, no one could possibly know it all; no matter how hard a person tries. Not only can I ask questions about areas I don't have a handle on; I answer other people's questions. This forces me to analyze what I think I already know more carefully, which sometimes uncovers gaps in my own knowledge base.

"From a personal perspective, I think it's fun," she says. "Even during the most recent tax season, it was a nice break from some of my more frustrating returns, and an opportunity to learn new and interesting stuff."

Fun and Taxes

Phoebe is a big believer in fun, for both tax preparers and clients. "If you're not having fun, you need to be doing something different," she says. "That's not to say every aspect of owning a business is fun, or that the fun aspects are fun all the time, but if you aren't enjoying what you're doing more than you'd enjoy doing something else, it's time to make a change. Take the business in another direction, grow it bigger, shrink it down and shift your focus. Do something to bring back the joy that drew you to that business."

What's Working Well in Her Practice

Although most of the advice is from a tax standpoint, Phoebe says that the value she and her mother bring to the table is in their willingness to listen.

"We refer to it as answering â€˜the question behind the words,' or what our clients are truly concerned about," she says, "even if they can't articulate that concern themselves. Our desire is to help our clients understand as much as they want to understand about their tax and financial situation."

Phoebe's Current Challenges

One of her pet peeves is the complexity of the tax code. Although it's currently how she makes a living, she believes it's morally wrong that taxes are so complex that people need to rely on paid preparers to get their returns right.

How Are You Meeting These Challenges?

She uses her posting activities as a way to improve the overall environment. This is under the realistic expectation that complexity is not going away overnight. "Until that point comes, I'd at least like to increase the odds that paid preparers are competent," she says.

Practice Snapshot â€“ Phoebe Roberts of Roberts & Associates, CPA

Star Employee: Phoebe Roberts
Founder: Leane Roberts
Website: www.robertscpa.com/about_us.htm
Where Else to Find Her Online: Intuit Accountant Community and CalCPA Education Foundation's Tax Talk Listserv
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/phoebe-roberts/0/a12/787
Clientele: Small and micro-business owners
Services: Tax and software consulting

More about Phoebe:
Professional Designations: CPA, EA, Tax Preparer; her undergraduate degree at Yale was in Psychology; when she took the Oklahoma State CPA Exam, she received the Oklahoma Gold Medal for the highest score in Oklahoma in Winter 2007. This was the same honor achieved by her mother some years earlier.
Expertise: Lacerte, tax regulations. Interested in Oil & Gas, Partnership Taxation, S-corp Taxation
Hobbies: Random bits of trivia