The small practitioners bane starts tomorrow -- the client who needs to file just one or two 1099s. They expect help and they resist fees because “it’s just one single little form.” And you want to make sure they stay compliant. Many of us relegate the duty to an admin, but it still eats time and overhead.

My tip of the  day is to point your clients to www.FileTaxes.com.

I just filed the two 1099s required of my consulting business and my total elapsed time was under a minute. Cost -- $7.58 ($3.79 per 1099 and the 1096 was free). Stupid easy! They e-file the government side and snail-mail the recipient forms. I get a PDF copy for my (paperless, obviously) file.

There are several others out there doing much the same thing, but most seem to gear for files needing maybe 25 forms. While FileTaxes will handle that, I think their real beauty is in the “little guy” space. And relieving the practitioner from an otherwise bothersome task.

For those that are interested this service is part of Greatland, a company that’s been serving practicing accountants for a very long time. It’s nice to see them harnessing [again] the power of the Internet to make life just a bit easier for us.

Something to think about in January...

[Editor's note:] Happy New Year! I’m off to CES next week and promise to Twitter a LOT about what I’m seeing there. Follow if you’d like at www.Twitter.com/glafollette.