Blogs

Meet Art Gomez, Senior Manager, Andersen

What led you to this career?

I have an accounting degree, and so I got a job as a tax accountant at Fast Tax, and they were bought by Thompson. At Fast Tax they developed their own computer programming language. Their choice was to teach all their programmers to program in the new language or teach their tax accountants to program. The second option is what they went with, and that’s how I learned to program, and that’s how I got into the tax technology field.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What I enjoy most is helping people, solving problems. When I left Corptax I went into industry. What was funny is some of my clients found out where I went and would still call and ask questions, and I’d still help them because I enjoyed doing it.

Do you have any helpful tips or tricks you’ve learned while working in the product?

I focus on state products. That’s not the only thing I do, but I focus on states. One of the biggest things I’ve learned that I share with clients is more states are going to mandatory e-file. A lot of states that aren’t already e-filing are putting more checks in their e-file validation. So, one of the biggest tips I have for clients is when you are starting your state process, start creating e-file packages early and run them and look at your errors. That tells you what you need to look for, what you need to have in your package hopefully months before you must file. I’ve seen clients that don’t create their package and don’t clear errors until after their return is done until it’s time to e-file, and they run their package and realize, oh that state ID is mandatory and some state IDs can take months to get it. So if you are doing this a week before filing and find out you have a state ID and it takes two months to get it, what are you going to do? Or you find out you need attachments or schedules, etc.; now you are crunched for time trying to get this all done in a week when you could have had months to get it done.

The other thing is I don’t think people utilize return folders as much as they should. Probably the biggest thing I would do, especially on the state side, is create state return folders. I can’t tell you how many times I have had a client that needed to amend a return from 7 years ago. This is before e-filing, so you couldn’t just go to your e-file folder to see what was filed. Amend CA combined return, 2015 environment, and there’s 5 of these returns in there. Which one did I file? I don’t know! So with return folders, create a state return filing folder and put in there whatever you filed. 10 years down the road you can go back to that system, back to that file, and know what you filed.

Have you discovered any enhancement or change to an internal process because of product setup?

The folders are the biggest thing. That helps a great deal. I had one client that wasn’t doing that, and we went back to the prior-year system to set up those folders. You can export that to Excel. That’s another thing I like about Corptax is you can export almost any grid to Excel. So I exported that, we compared it to their filing list, and what they found was there were returns in the filing list they did not file in Corptax that they should have. So now they have late filing penalties. They also filed returns they shouldn’t have filed.

Another thing on Corptax’s side is the international Next Gen forms. State returns are pretty easy to create packages but not so much for federal forms. But with Next Gen forms, you don’t have to do all that work. You tell the folder what package to go to and it automatically goes to that package.

What is something, big or small, that you are really good at?

I think what I’m really good, and the reason I like doing this, is I’m good at chasing down problems. I got into programming early in my career, and because of that I am interested in how things work. So when I have a problem, I’m good at going backwards and figuring out what the problem is.

What are your professional goals for the next 5 years?

I have worn many hats and tried many roles, and through those experiences I realized that my strength is in solving problems for clients. I really enjoy problem solving and helping others, and I plan to continue in this role.

What changes have you seen in your field in the last 5 years?

When I started in this field, you [tax accountants] were mainly doing tax returns, you were doing provision, you were doing auditing, but that’s all you were doing. Now today, more people are getting more technical—more [learning] how to pull the data yourself. When you were only doing tax returns, only doing provision, you were relying on IT to get you the data. You were relying on someone else to get you the data you needed, so a lot of the time it was waiting to get the data you need. Today, accountants are being technically trained to get the data themselves. So that’s where I see a lot of the change of them not only doing returns and provision but getting the data they need themselves.

Flashback to when you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up?

That’s easy! I wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy! I only played football my freshman and senior years of high school. I was small in high school and ran track year-round. Cross country in the fall, and track and field in the spring.

What hobbies do you enjoy in your personal time?

We like to travel everywhere. The deal I made with my wife 5 years ago was she wanted to go on a trip a month and the trip cannot be in a car. It must be on a plane. So, we did that up until the pandemic. We started travelling again in December. We’ve visited the west (New Mexico & Texas), east coast (NYC, Connecticut, and RI) and south (Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina). We are now planning a trip to Italy during the month of November.

The year before the pandemic we did UK, France, Korea, Japan. Those four countries in a year. Favorite place I’ve been to is New Zealand. We want to go back there; it was really cool. We’ve been to Hawaii a few times too. We decided we didn’t want to wait until we were old because we wouldn’t be as mobile as we wanted to be. We could have a nicer house, nicer cars, but we decided to spend our money on travel.

What is a little-known fact about you that would surprise your colleagues?

I’m an ordained minister. So far, I have never officiated weddings, but I was a deacon at my church and as part of the deacons you get ordained.

What’s the best professional advice you were ever given? Who was it from?

The best advice I was given was do not burn bridges. That was given to me by Dan Silvie, who used to work at Corptax with me, then used to own his own firm and I worked at his firm with him. He said, “Don’t burn bridges, especially in the tax technology world, because the tax tech world is a small world and you’re going to come across that bridge again whether you know it or not, so you never, ever burn bridges.”

Final thoughts?

The only thing I would say is that Corptax is the most powerful compliance tool out there, and it can do so much for you. Take advantage of that. Corptax offers great support and is always available to assist you.