IN PERSON : Safety in Numbers Not Always the Case
Jean Burgess had been a tax preparer less than a year when the shot rang out.
“Somebody shot through the front window of our office, and I felt the bullet whiz right by my hair,” said Burgess, a 23-year veteran tax expert for H&R; Block. “I wondered: ‘Who did I make mad this time?’ ”
Turns out it was nothing personal, just random gunfire from teens on a weekend search-and-destroy mission. But the experience foreshadowed the coming years of emotional outbursts the 64-year-old Fountain Valley resident would experience from clients, who never really get used to paying taxes.
“Taxes are something that nobody likes. That never changes.”
As the April 15 filing deadline approaches, Burgess increasingly is besieged by angst-ridden clients.
Every hour of her time is accounted for. She heads H&R; Block’s Executive Tax Service office in Irvine, where employees shield her from unscheduled demands on her time to help her keep from falling behind.
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In her line of work, Burgess is part physician and part priest, attending to the financial health of her clients while guarding their most personal financial confessions.
“When a client comes into your office and sits down, you ask their name, their address and their occupation. And at that moment, you have to start living their life. Right away you put on the thinking cap and ask: What would be involved if I were in that occupation? If I were that person? That’s what you do to try and dig for all the deductions you can.”
No interruptions are allowed as her clients lay out the financial details of their lives. She keeps a candy dish within their reach.
“The No. 1 thing I’ve learned over the years is that it must be human nature to complicate your life,” Burgess said. “We see a lot of complicated situations where people do things that end up hurting them. We can’t tell these people what they should do with their money, but as we’re preparing their tax returns, we see the mistakes they’re making.”
Like the recently widowed client whose financial records showed a burst of stock trading after her husband died, pushing her capital-gains taxes significantly higher.
“Undoubtedly, it looked to us like her stockbroker was churning the account,” Burgess said, referring to the practice by which brokers increase commission fees by making frequent stock transactions. “But yet, who are we to say? Those are difficult personal areas to get into.”
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Burgess, who taught H&R; tax-preparation classes for seven years, has worked for the company in Illinois, Utah, Wyoming and Arizona while her now-retired husband worked in the construction trade. In Page, Ariz., she did the returns for many Native Americans living in the area.
Members of the Navajo tribe discovered they would not have to pay federal income tax if they lived and worked on a reservation. So a group of Navajos who worked at a power plant that happened to be on Native American land parked their trailers in a circle around the plant, Burgess said, turning it into a tax shelter.
For those who did pay taxes, Burgess had to adjust her work habits.
“When I first started, I couldn’t understand why I could never get the clients out of their chairs after the return was completed,” she said. “I found out it was because they didn’t like what they were getting back for a refund. They were prepared to wait until the amount changed.
“My boss finally said, ‘Don’t tell them what their refund or balance due is. Simply stand up and let them know you are done, take them to the door and then tell them; grab the next client and head for the office.’ ”
Constant changes in tax law can make it a challenge for her to convince clients that unpleasant developments are not of her own making.
She still remembers the reaction of a new client when she told him that federal disability payments had lost their tax-exempt status.
“I had to peel him off the ceiling. He called me an utter idiot, and he told me I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about.”
Then there was the physician who wanted to claim his grown children as dependents.
“I was trying to do a dependency-support statement, and I asked him how much they had earned that preceding year so I could figure out if he could legally claim them. He said, ‘I don’t ask my children what they earn, and it’s certainly none of your damn business.’ ”
The biggest taxpayer complaint is the complexity of tax forms, which Burgess said is fueling national interest in flat-tax proposals.
“People complain more about that than they do about the paying of taxes,” she said. “If the government could simplify the preparation, I think people would even be more willing to pay their taxes. But we in the business always shudder when the word ‘simplification’ is used because we know what’s going to happen: It’s going to become even more complicated.”
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Most of the people who err on their taxes don’t pay too little but pay too much by not taking all allowable deductions, she said.
On the other end, IRS auditors are getting better at finding taxpayers who cheat.
“They’re getting much nicer, and they’re getting much sharper.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Profile: Jean Burgess
Age: 64
Hometown: Waterloo, Iowa
Came to Orange County: 1978
Residence: Fountain Valley
Family: Married, four grown children
Background: Has worked for H&R; Block since 1973; director of company’s Executive Tax Service office in Irvine for five years
Tax time: “Most people who come in want to pay their taxes; they realize that it’s the tax money that’s running our wonderful country, but they want every deduction they are entitled to and they don’t want to pay 50 cents more than their share.”
Source: Jean Burgess; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times
