Some days I just want to pitch a revival tent and preach to tax practitioners, “Throw away your crutches.”

Before we had the Internet and Google, there wasn’t an alternative to cutting down trees and paying publishers to organize bits of tax law according to Code section (which, ultimately, is all they do). But today, you have the same resources they have. So use them.

Many of my clients are not wealthy. I tell them I don’t pay for my overhead; it all comes from them. I don’t want to bill them for buying stuff that I can find just as easily for free, if I know where and how to look.

Ask yourself, what are you finding in publications that doesn’t come from stuff you can locate with a few keystrokes online? It may take some practice to develop that skill, but it will maintain and improve your professionalism when you learn where these people are getting all that free information they are trying to sell you.