Generally, What Is the Firm's Strategy in a Multi-State Tax Matter? So if you've watched some of the other videos in the series I think you've kind of gotten a flavor for how I look at multi-state tax issues but let me just summarize number one I don't believe in just jumping in what I believe in is really taking the time to develop a strategy that makes sense for a business I run a small business myself I'm aware of the challenges that come with businesses and I'm aware that the legal decisions that get made for a company aren't the driving factor a lot of times the business has to do what's best for itself so my approach is always business first it's about taking legal decisions or tax decisions and framing that into what makes the most sense for the business you know I'm certainly going to argue for being in compliance I'm certainly going to argue for mitigating risk from a legal perspective, but I'm not gonna sacrifice the profitability of a business to do that we're gonna have to find a compromise sometimes so our approach generally is about building a strategy and then really it's about the efficiency in execution of that strategy it's about taking the clients resources whether they're a small company or whether they're you know a multi multi-million dollar corporation it's about taking those resources it's about taking the resources of the CPA firm that they have about taking the resources of any bookkeeping that they have whether internally or externally and the way that I look at this from our firm's perspective is we're kind of the quarterback of the team the client is in charge clients in charge of dictating what needs to be done but we go out and we help execute that we'll certainly offer advice we're certainly offered guidance and direction and what we think is best in order to help our clients make the best decisions they can but the client runs the show and it's our job to not only execute the strategy that they want us to but do so in the most efficient it's not about just plugging away and getting things done although that certainly is important the important thing is what is the best thing for the business where is the business best served by taking the strategy that we've developed in step one and translating that across the business is there way that we can implement the tax strategy into the clients sales process so that the salespeople or the resources that the client has are keeping them out of trouble you know what are other ways we can work with the clients business processes to make sure that what we're doing is most effective and then most commonly with multi-state issues where are areas that we can save the client money there are a lot of areas that most clients miss when they do that so you know oftentimes clients will retain us on a matter and what we try and do with our expertise is trying to bring as much value as we can to that individual client situation we're always a fan of trying ideas of trying to mitigate costs and try to do the best thing for our clients so that's generally the approach that we take when we handle a multi-state tax matter.