Taos accounting firm adapts after complicated tax year
Most people don’t think of an accounting office as an exciting place, but Doug Swinehart and his staff at Swinehart CPA would argue otherwise, at least after the whirlwind of tax law changes that kept them on their toes in 2021.
“Last year, it felt like when you’re a kid and you’re like, ‘The floor is lava. The floor is lava.’ That’s what it felt like last year. Every day it was just turning to lava underneath you,” says Sydney Swinehart, Doug Swinehart’s daughter.
Doug Swinehart uses another analogy: He compares the changes to the tax law that have been put into effect over the course of the pandemic to playing a board game where the shape of the board keeps changing: “It’s like playing Monopoly, but suddenly there’s a diagonal in the board for a little while, and then they go back and they put a curve in it, then it goes back to Broadway. And then they totally remove the curve and then go back to the way it was. It’s like, ‘Guys, I’m filing tax returns here. They’re in the mail. And now you’re changing what we’ve been doing.’ “
He’s not wrong. The federal government enacted three major changes to the tax rules in 2020 and then another major change in 2021, which altered the taxability of unemployment benefits, which were claimed at unprecedented levels due to widespread layoffs and resignations that took place over the course of the public health crisis.
All of this got Swinehart to thinking about how he and his staff handle taxes for the many individuals, businesses, estates and trusts that rely on his firm in Taos County every year. How could his business be greener, more technologically savvy and more agile amid so much uncertainty?
He said the answer came to him after he watched an interview with former Disney President Bob Iger, who stepped down from his role as president of the entertainment juggernaut last year after more than two decades at its helm. His rationale? It was time for new, younger blood to take the reins and try out new ideas. “A big part of the reason he is stepping down is that he wants Disney to be able to be a little bit faster and a little more nimble and not be constrained by his mindset, which has been at Disney now for 20-someodd years,” Swinehart said.
So on Jan. 1, Swinehart decided to do the same. Since that date, he has moved into a CPA-only role, while his daughter and longtime accountant Charlotte Jeantete have become the new owners of the firm.
“I’m still going to be here, so I can still be a sounding board, but I just thought this would give the firm a fresh perspective,” he said. “I’m originally from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Both of these two are originally born and raised in Taos. They’re just younger eyes that will see all things differently.”
Sydney Swinehart and Jeantete graduated from Taos High School in 2009 and 2005, respectively. While she was a junior, Jeantete worked as an intern at Swinehart CPA, and after she graduated from college, she returned to the firm. Both women attended New Mexico universities and are fullycertified CPAs.
Together, they will manage the firm’s six other employees and hope to make some positive changes to how the business operates.
To start, they are going to invest in new, paperless processes that will allow them to run a more environmentally friendly business. Some of the firm’s employees, being higher risk for COVID-19, shifted to working remotely during the pandemic, so they see an additional need to move away from the more traditional pen-and-paper accounting firm model and toward one that can operate in the virtual space.
But that doesn’t mean the office won’t be open to people who need to drop off a stack of tax documents if they need to.
“We also still want to be able to have that small town approach with our clients in the sense that they can come in if they’re overwhelmed with technology,” Jeantete said. “We want them to have a landing pad, where they know they can always walk in our doors and see us, talk to us, bring us papers if they need to. I guess we just want to adapt to whatever’s coming our way.”
Another one of their goals is community outreach, Swinehart said.
“We also really want to start getting more involved with the community and the schools, bring back the internship program because that’s where Charlotte was able to be introduced into the accounting industry, through that internship,” she said. “We would love to have that opportunity for our youth to kind of get a feel of what we do and different areas of extending their career choices and getting a feel for it within the community.”
Jeantete said that, even without all the hoops CPAs had to jump through as the rules changed during the pandemic, there’s something that accountants find compelling about working with numbers and helping to untangle complex problems for the clients they serve.
“What we usually tell people is that we just love solving the financial puzzle, because everybody’s is so different,” she said.