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The Enchanted World of Phoebe Roberts

If You Love Your Work, Life Is Like a Fairy Tale

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Editor's Note: Scott Cytron talks with CPA and Enrolled Agent Phoebe Roberts, an All-Star Poster on Intuit's Community Site and a loyal user of Lacerte Tax Software. Phoebe demonstrates that if you love your work, life can be a fairy tale, and Scott uses the fairy tale theme to illuminate the many high points in her career to date.

Once upon a time, in a small town outside of Tulsa, lived a CPA and Enrolled Agent named Phoebe Roberts. This self-proclaimed "Phoebe-of-all-Trades" is an All-Star Poster on Intuit's Community site, making her not only a recognizable name within Intuit's user groups, but a much relied-on expert to help answer difficult questions. How did this damsel take a degree in Psychology from an Ivy League school and parlay it into receiving the Oklahoma Gold Medal for the highest score in Oklahoma in Winter 2007? (As part of her fairy tale life, a generation earlier her own mother, Leanne Roberts, achieved the same honor when she took the exam.)

Snow White, Eat Your Heart Out

That do-gooder of all princesses, Snow White, would have finally met her match with Phoebe Roberts, who never seems to tire of answering questions within Intuit's Community of users and providers. She is also a member of the Lacerte Tax Users Group.

"By working to improve the preparer community, I'm doing a good deed for society," she says. "Even if I don't learn anything interesting or useful in responding, I increase the odds that people who are reasonably relying on a paid preparer will get a good tax return - and I'm in favor of anything that increases the percentage of good tax returns."

Actually, she views these platforms as an extension of social media. She is fairly active on TaxTalk, a Yahoo group sponsored by the California Society of CPAs that is open to CPAs and attorneys.

"These activities make me a better tax return preparer and a better advisor to my clients by giving me access to hundreds of other people's brains," says Phoebe. "Even within the narrow specialization of tax, no one could possibly know it all, no matter how hard a person tries. Not only can I ask questions about areas I don't have a handle on, I answer other people's questions. This forces me to analyze what I think I already know more carefully, which sometimes uncovers gaps in my own knowledge base," she says.

"From a personal perspective, I think it's fun," she says. "Even during the most recent tax season, it was a nice break from some of my more frustrating returns, and an opportunity to learn new and interesting stuff."

A Tale of Taxing Matters

Just don't get Phoebe started on tax legislation; even Grumpy would be in her camp. She believes it's morally wrong that taxes are so complex that people need to rely on paid preparers to get their returns right.

"If I were King of the World, I'd require everyone who votes on tax legislation to spend every filing deadline on the front lawn of their legislative building, preparing returns for all comers with nothing but a stack of forms and a sharp pencil! The theory is that tax returns would suddenly become so easy to complete that everyone could do their own. Until that point comes, I'd at least like to increase the odds that paid preparers are competent."

Phoebe's strong views about tax simplification transfer directly to her family's tax practice, Roberts & Associates, CPA, a sole proprietorship in Broken Arrow, Okla. With her mother, Leanne, as owner, and her father, George, as the firm's computer help desk and errand runner, the practice serves the greater Tulsa community.

"Just call me 'Tax Girlie' because I do whatever my clients want me to do, except for the things I don't; in fact, I do whatever my boss wants me to, except for the things I don't! That's about as defined as positions or duties get around here!"

Phoebe says most of what she does is help the firm's clients make sense of the world by using tax returns as the pretext to start a discussion. Although most of the advice is from a tax standpoint, the value she and her mother bring to the table is in their willingness to listen.

"We refer to it as answering 'the question behind the words,' or what our clients are truly concerned about, even if they can't articulate that concern themselves. Our desire is to help our clients understand as much as they want to understand about their tax and financial situation."

All the firm does is tax - no write-ups, compilations, reviews, audits, payroll, investment advisory or anything else. Although Phoebe has many clients where the owner is the only worker, she believes, "tax is complex enough without trying to know the rules for the other stuff."

Sleeping Beauty Stayed Awake for Her CPA Exam

Future CPA Exam candidates take note: Phoebe says you don't have to kiss a lot of frogs to pass the exam. It just takes an ounce of smarts and a dose of passion.

There is quite a bit of humble-pie, however. Although Phoebe's score earned her the Oklahoma Gold Medal for the Winter 2007 CPA exam period, she missed out on the much-coveted Elijah Watt Sells award based on her lower score in the "Business Environment and Concepts" section.

"I actually wasn't particularly prepared for the CPA exam, other than in the sense that I'm a compulsive over-preparer," she says. "On the spur of the moment, I sat for it during tax season. Had I thought I'd do that well, I'd have tried harder because of the Sells' award."

Phoebe's first trip down the graduation aisle was at Yale University, where she received a degree in Psychology, something she refers to as "the most worthless degree ever in terms of job prospects" and something she can't recommend to anyone who isn't dead-set on going to grad school. After about 10 years, while working for several years in payroll and human resources for two companies, then at the firm about eight years, she was ready to go back to school. Phoebe picked up the accounting hours she needed to sit for the CPA exam at Northeastern State University in Broken Arrow. As she puts it, "all my clients thought I was a CPA anyhow."

Regardless how much experience she had, school hours quickly added up, and by the time she finished, Phoebe took about 45 hours spread over two summer and two fall terms. Finished with classes by December 2006, she planned to sit for two parts of the exam in May 2007, but didn't want to mess with getting her paperwork into the Oklahoma Accountancy Board or finding test prep software during tax season, so she went ahead and began preparing right away.

Because she had been doing tax returns for the last eight years, the tax section was sort of a "no-brainer;" intense work helped pass the other sections.

"I studied completely at random - at night after work, in the car on the way to CPE and whenever I had a free moment. My recollection is that I studied a lot - probably 40 hours a section - but I didn't feel more prepared for the exam than I'd be for anything else. I like taking tests and I'm good at guessing what answer the writer has in mind. The CPA exam is a weird mix of random obscure rules and practical knowledge that was a good fit for my skill-set."

Rapunzel - Let Down Your Hair

If it's not obvious by now, Phoebe has strong opinions about tax, financial matters, small business issues and a lot more that are too numerous to name. Here are a few of her philosophies pertinent to any business environment, whether you live in Broken Arrow or the magic kingdom.

On Outside Counsel. "I personally do not believe that outside advisors can solve a small business's problems; you can lead a horse to water, and suggest it might be thirsty, but that's about it. For business issues caused by externalities, such as the unavailability of credit, there's nothing either the advisor or the business owner can do other than to have planned well previously. I've seen too many clients sold a bill of goods by salespeople who paint a pretty picture, but whose product couldn't deliver."

On Passion and Energy. "If you're not having fun, you need to be doing something different. That's not to say every aspect of owning a business is fun, or that the fun aspects are fun all the time, but if you aren't enjoying what you're doing more than you'd enjoy doing something else, it's time to make a change. Take the business in another direction, grow it bigger, shrink it down and shift your focus. Do something to bring back the joy that drew you to that business."

On Long-Term Survival. "Spend some time each day working in the business, and some time each day working on the business. If you spend all of your time working in the business, your business will either stagnate or it will become just a job. While there's nothing wrong with having a job, when your business becomes a job, you have the downside of being an employee and being self-employed. You lose out on the up sides of both. If you spend all of your time working on the business, you're going to be out of touch with your customers and your employees - and when that happens, the best you can hope for is that they quietly go away."

On the CPA's Role (as She Presents it to Clients. "No matter how much you trust your employees, it does them a disservice to lead them into temptation. Look at your financial statements to make sure they feel right to you. This is something your CPA can help you with - not the knowing if they feel right, but translating the numbers into words. Be the first person to open the bank statement and take the time to look through the checks. Don't keep cash on hand beyond the minimum needed to operate that's available to anyone but you. Show up at the office or the store, both on a regular schedule and unexpectedly."

Scott H. Cytron, ABC, is a frequent contributor to industry publications covering professional services industries, including accounting, healthcare, financial planning, collections and debt, and high-tech. His articles have appeared with some frequency in Intuit ProConnection. A senior vice president at Pierpont Communications, Inc., in Dallas, he can be reached at scytron@piercom.com.

Last Updated: 06/19/2009