Originally published on Forbes.com Jan 18th, 2014
Rachel Millios has a really interesting approach to tax practice that she will be implementing this year. She calls it “location independent”, which I see is old news in other fields, but tax practice not so much. More on that later, because the story of how she got into tax work is really interesting. It began when she was still Rachel Simon, a 19-year-old political science major at the University of Minnesota. She realized that she was not going to be able to afford college and enlisted in the Army.
My Big Letdown
When Rachel told me that she had been in the 101st Airborne Division, I had visions of a headline along the lines of from paratrooper to tax accountant. The Army takes heritage very seriously, so while serving with the 101st Airborne Division she was entitled to wear the ribbon for the Presidential Unit Citation that the 101st earned for its first combat action, which was in Normandy in 1944
As it turned out, Rachel was not trained to jump out of perfectly operating airplanes. Her job was to play the saxophone in the Division’s band. When she deployed to Iraq in 2002, there was no saxophone playing in the desert, though. The band members packed their instruments and were assigned random duties.
Specialist Simon began to think that her name had been changed to “Hey you”. She mainly did guard duty and participated in convoys. She said it was generally pretty safe around Mosul, although conditions were fairly primitive. She has vivid memories of disposing of human feces by burning it and an unauthorized two-car convoy to allow a departing officer to view the Hatra ruins. She said this video gives a pretty good picture of what it was like for the 101st in Iraq in 2003.
A Change In MOS
The military music field is actually kind of competitive, possibly because steady jobs for musicians in civilian life are kind of scarce. Rachel is ambitious and wanted to develop useful post-military skills, so Sergeant Simon went back to school to train as a paralegal along with soldiers who had just finished basic training. As a paralegal she helped soldiers with a myriad of problems including claims against the government. After 18 months, it was back to Iraq. She describes her second tour this way.
After about 18 months back at Fort Campbell, I was off again for another “rendezvous with destiny” – this time I went to COB Speicher near Tikrit, Iraq. I left September 11, 2005. Although I thought I knew what to expect, 18 months and quite a few miles south was a completely different experience. This time I spent my tour as a “Battle NCO (Non Commissioned Officer)”. My battalion was tasked with maintaining the garrison of COB Speicher so I worked in what basically amounted to the 911 call center for all things on the base (also known as a BDOC, Base Defense Operations Cell). 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week. I would never complain about the hours – relatively safe working conditions, bathrooms and showers with running water, hot food – much more comfortable than many others had.
Next time you hear a CPAs bitching about long hours during tax season, remind them to be grateful for having a bathroom available. Rachel has a modest perspective on her experience.
Again, I can never complain because there were many others that had many more, deeply challenging deployments. There were those who came home wounded (whether visibly or invisibly injured), and there were those who didn’t come home.
I’m proud of my experience but there are many service members and veterans out there who have been through much more than I ever have. I came out unharmed, with an education, with leadership experience and a skill set. I consider myself very fortunate.
On The Army
I don’t think I have heard such an upbeat view of Army life, since Major Smullins, the Senior Army Instructor at Xavier High School, explained to us what a good deal real ROTC was as we finished our four years of Junior ROTC. Rachel said she had no problems with sexual harassment, although she did not discount the reports of others. She believed that the Army is very interested in advancing women as 78% of the jobs in the Army are open to women, while they make up only 14% of the force.
She also had a very positive view of leadership.
Generals don’t get to where they are unless they are something special. I have met and conversed with a few (each time stressful for me) but from each interaction I gleaned that they were genuinely interested in what I had to say, and generally concerned for the well-being of their workforce. True leaders lead from the front, not bark orders from the back (or their penthouse office). When General Petraeus headed the 101st, he slept in a cot, took sporadic showers, went on convoys, and visited EVERY unit deployed to hand them their combat patches and shake their hands. There’s camaraderie there that is hard to replicate in the private sector.
The Army really liked Staff Sergeant Simon, too. They had her stay in an extra eight months beyond her contract under the “Stop Loss” program.
Transition To Tax Work
The legal aide job was Rachel’s introduction to tax work. The base legal group coordinated the IRS VITA program at Fort Campbell, which provided free tax returns to service members and military retirees. Rachel had completed her bachelor’s degree on-line while in the Army and used GI Bill benefits to get an MBA. After leaving the Army, she worked for the USO for a while, but then started working remotely for a virtual firm that prepares tax returns for expatriates. She took the IRS exam and earned the enrolled agent (EA) designation.
Somewhere in there, she found the time to get married and have a son, who is now four. Her husband is a JAG officer. She is working on getting a Master in Financial Accounting to qualify as a CPA.
She has been working part-time for a lawyer/CPA who focuses on IRS collection matters. I think that will be really excellent background. Most tax professionals who focus on compliance and planning for the majority of the population, that is able to arrange their lives to live on their after-tax income, are pretty clueless about the collections world.
She has also launched her own location independent practice, which will focus on expatriates and military people. Since her husband’s career will require regular uprooting, it seemed like the only way to build a business. Rachel told me that she sometimes thinks about going back in the military, but the prospect of having to show up for work an hour and a half early for PT is daunting along with the risk that she and her husband would be both deployed a the same time.
I asked her why she thought she needed the CPA designation for what she was planning to do.
The CPA designation is clearly the trusted standard in the profession and I don’t see any reason not to aim towards that goal. As an EA, they profession is not nearly as well known among the general population for tax and accounting – it can be a challenge when developing your own client leads. As you know, taxes are not done in a vacuum. There has to be a holistic financial and managerial approach to taxation so my goal with the CPA is that I’ll be better equipped to provide my clients or a future employer with well rounded advice.
I guess all that marketing the AICPA does with my dues money is paying off. Now that I’ve got a boutique tax practice going with a couple of national firm refugees, I was thinking about taking the EA exam myself and saving some money. Maybe I will hold off.
You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.