Tax prepration office

Astromath · 2018-04-28T10:51:15.000Z

What tag would you use for an office that does tax preparation only? Accountant doesn’t work because of the narrow nature of the amenity. Tax Adviser is closer but even then it doesn’t address tax preparation only. Think of H&R Block, Jackson-Hewitt, or Liberty Tax Service. Only the district office could be considered a Tax Adviser office, but the satellite offices doesn’t have the full range of services that a Tax Adviser office does.

Brian_de_Ford · 2018-04-28T11:27:21.000Z

Are you saying that the people who do tax preparation are not required to hold accountancy qualifications?

It’s an accountant. A specialized accountant, perhaps, but an accountant. There might be an argument for a new subtag like accountancy=tax_preparation but I’m not going to make it because you could use description=“Tax preparation only.”

OSM is not a replacement for google or yellow pages.

SK53 · 2018-04-28T11:54:21.000Z

In general I think we should reserve the tag accountants for CPAs/Chartered/Certified Accountants who offer a broad range of accounting services.

An alternative might be bookkeeper, but I would go with the more general office=financial_services, which potentially could cover the two former options as well, but is best reserved for things which are either rare or (currently) awkward to categorise. This can be suitably subtagged with a straight financial_services=tax_preparation or financial_services:type=tax_preparation.

Given the sheer number of H&R Block offices a straight tag office=tax_preparation might be justified.

Astromath · 2018-04-28T15:57:31.000Z

I am a tax preparer for one of the companies mentioned. I do not hold an accounting degree. I had to take a class that the company offered and if I passed with an 80% or above, I was hired (that was 23 years ago). Each year thereafter I have to take classes that the company provides to keep my credentials and be rehired each year.

Even AARP offers free tax preparation services for those who cannot afford to go to the companies mentioned during tax season at various locations such as the library. And they are definitely not an accounting firm.

MikeN1 · 2018-04-29T10:33:17.000Z

I’ve been using office=tax_advisor https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:office%3Dtax_advisor

Astromath · 2018-04-29T10:57:50.000Z

That’s just it. A tax adviser does much more than a tax preparer, therefore the tax_adviser tag is too broad in scope.

SomeoneElse · 2018-04-29T12:17:38.000Z

The nearest that taginfo finds is (see https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=tax#values ) is “shop=tax_preparation”, but there’s only 10 of those.