A Sinking Ship - Anonymous employee TaxAudit Employee Review

Unless you're desperate for work, run as far away as you can from this company. This company has only one real source of income that is hanging on by a thread. It is currently being run into the ground by the children of former executives who have never had real jobs outside of this company. The executive team is comprised of completely unqualified nepotism hires. This company was founded by actual tax professionals who built it from the ground up and actually cared about their employees so you will hear some people who are clinging to the past say this is a good place to work, but those days are gone. Once the former execs reached retirement age they passed the company on to their kids who have proceeded to mismanage everything and have no respect for their employees. Aside from all this, there's the fact that 95% of this company's income comes from a contract with TurboTax. TurboTax, knowing they are the only source of income for taxaudit, has huge leverage when it comes to contract negotiations. Now TurboTax has purchased their own audit defense company from credit karma so their need for taxaudit is coming to an end and if you're counting on the kids to be able to keep taxaudit afloat without TurboTax you're dreaming. I'd say taxaudit has 5 years left max. Now if you've read this far and aren't worried let me tell you what it is like working here. They have incredibly low standards so getting your foot in the door is very easy, keeping your job is another story. They will say the company is "like a family" meaning that they will take advantage of you any chance they get. Nepotism extends past the executive team, this company is rampant with it. Your manager will likely be someone's friend or daughter or cousin and will have no real world job experience. They have a history of luring people into a false sense of security, asking for employee ideas about processes, saying they want you to "ask why", but doing this will only make you stick out to them and the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Also your managers, team leads, and fellow employees will take long frequent breaks, long lunches, and call out last minute. It will all be fine until the day they decide they don't want you anymore and then something that's gone unnoticed for years will be the excuse they use to fire someone they just dont like. You will see them talking about how their benefits can't be matched but if you've worked anywhere else you will quickly see that's not true and what benefits there are get cut down every year. They brag about their employee stock ownership program like it's the biggest benefit to working there and as if no other company does this (anyone heard of costco or winco? You can get better benefits at a grocery store). When I started, the company contributed 50% of your annual income to the esop, which actually was something to brag about, this year the contributions were 10% which is essentially equivalent to other company's 401k contributions (and because of the esop they don't make 401k contributions) . Also when I started, entry level pay was around 5 dollars over minimum wage, now entry level pay is minimum wage. There are consequences to not paying competitive wages, they can't hire enough tax pros because tax pros know they can make more money working for themselves than for taxaudit, so there aren't enough tax pros on which to distribute the massive workload. Tax pros are slammed with cases, they try to pass any non-tax related work down the line to other departments but it isn't enough to balance out. Also from a performance standpoint, getting a good customer satisfaction rating is everything but they put you in a situation where providing good customer service is almost impossible. Tax pros are overworked and underpaid. Overworked and underpaid should be this company's motto. They provide health insurance and dental, but surprise surprise, the plans keep getting worse. I would suggest not getting sick and using your medical insurance unless you want to upset them and give them an excuse to look for reasons to fire you. Dont expect decent raises, you'd be lucky to get a cost of living raise, this year they even went so far as to suggest they cut your PTO to give you a raise. If you're still interested in working here these are my suggestions, keep your head down, never get comfortable here, always keep your guard up, they will use anything as an excuse to fire you once the right person decides they don't like you. Do not do any overtime, they will do everything they can think of to not give you proper overtime pay. Most important thing to do here is make friends with the right people. Quality of work is always secondary to how they feel about you personally. They love saying "have a positive attitude" and by that they mean a fake smile plastered on your face at all times and no complaints. Best thing you can do with this company is use it to get job experience and get out.