JONES, COVEY & COMPANY, P.A.
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANTS
P. O. Box 1865
114 East 2nd Street
Washington, North Carolina 27889
(252) 946-0545
Fax (252) 974-0118
R. LEWIS JONES, C.P.A.
MICHELL N COVEY C.P.A.
MEMBER
North Carolina Association and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
November 15, 2024
As we prepare for the close of another busy year, we wanted to take the opportunity to reach out to our valued clients to thank you for being with us. You’re in 40 different states and 10 different countries, but we’re so grateful you’re all here. We marked our 40th year in business in 2024 and we couldn’t have done it without all of you. The theme for this exciting year in our firm has been “Growth”. We renovated a portion of our building and added three new offices spaces. We also expanded our staff to include three new positions, as well as some other new faces, to build a famtastic team of professionals that are here to serve you.
With that in mind, I want to highlight two of the biggest changes in our office. Firstly, as you may have noticed from our letterhead, we have a brand new name moving into the new year – Jones, Covey & Company. Some of you may already be familiar with Michell Covey, who has been with our firm for five years now. I am pleased to announce that she is now a partner in the firm, and I know that she is excited to serve you all in this new capacity. I also want to thank Gary Wilson and Robert Griffin for all of their contributions to our firm over the years. They have helped to shape us into who we are and we wouldn’t be where we are today without them. Additionally, I want to take a moment to congratulate Christian Rogers on obtaining his CPA license this year. Christian has been with us for a year now, and we look forward to seeing how much he grows as a professional with our firm.
In addition to building our team, we also took the opportunity to strengthen it this year. We’ve traveled to Morehead and tested our teamwork in escape rooms, we celebrated Halloween with a pumpkin carving contest (a BIG congratulations to our winner, Vee Rodriguez) and costumes, we honored our local first responders with our annual breakfast, and we shopped for two foster children in need of a good Christmas. We plan to end the year family-style, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with meals and fun together.
Now that we have reflected on what has passed, we look forward to the new year and another tax season. There are a few housekeeping items that I want to take the opportunity to review with you before we head into our busiest time of the year.
For our clients with businesses, there is a new federal reporting requirement that I wanted to address. You may have received solicitations to complete a BOI report. This is a legitimate filing, even if the solicitation itself is questionable. If you own a business that is registered with the NC Secretary of State, you are required to file this report prior to January 1, 2025. Unfortunately, our professional organization has ruled that the BOI report is a legal document. This means that we are unable to assist you in the preparation of this report. You can file it online via the FinCEN website or you can contact your attorney, who can also file the report. If you have any questions or concerns about the requirement or whether or not you are subject to the filing, please do not hesitate to contact our office and we will be happy to assist you.
The largest tax season change for 2025 will be our process for tax organizers. If you’ve been with us for multiple tax seasons, you are aware that we typically mail out paper organizers in December in order to assist you with gathering your information for your tax return. In the past, this has been an automatic process based on lists generated by our tax software. We have grown to the point that this process is no longer practical or efficient, and doesn’t necessarily serve you all best as clients. During our last tax season, we found that many clients received organizers and didn’t need them, while others who needed them didn’t receive them. This year, we will be testing a new “opt-in” process. If you wish to receive a tax organizer for the 2024 tax year, please call our office or email us at wjcpafrontdesk@gmail.com by December 15th, and we will add you to our organizer mailing list.
We will start accepting tax preparation appointments in Janurary. Appointment availability can be limited as it gets later in the season, so we encourage you to come in as early as possible, even if you haven’t received all of your tax documents. We now have three CPA’s in the office that will accept appointments in order to increase availability and better serve you. Please feel free to make an appointment with any of us. If you do not require an appointment, you are also welcome to simply drop off your information at our front desk. We prepare tax returns on a first in, first out basis, so dropping off can sometimes mean we can get your return prepared faster than if you need to wait on an appointment. One of our tax professionals will reach out to you if they have any questions when preparing your return.
Finally, our drop-off deadlines for information will be February 28th for corporate returns and March 24th for individual returns. We will need all of your tax information by these dates to ensure that we can meet the filing deadlines for the respective returns. As always, if we receive your information after these dates, we will do everything we can to get your returns filed without an extension but we can’t guarantee it.
Again, we appreciate you choosing us as your tax professionals and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Sincerely,
Lewis Jones, CPA
Jones, Covey & Company, PA