All New Tax Preparation Service, With An Impressive Backstory

Affordable Tax Services is an operating division of Canwest Accounting Limited, a well-established, full-service accounting, bookkeeping, tax preparation, and filing service to personal and corporate clients in Greater Victoria, B.C., for the past 25 years. We are a separate and distinct offer servicing a specific need for economical and reliable tax preparation services to those whose tax filing needs are straightforward – and should therefore be treated and priced as such.

Affordable Tax Services may be the ‘new kid on the block’, but we go back a long way. Our rich backstory in tax preparation and filing equips us with the know-how and perspective to develop a genuinely new approach to a no-frills income tax preparation service, one based on a fixed-price menu versus the traditional variable professional fees associated with more complex client needs. Our service is specifically aimed at those clients whose tax preparation and filing needs are straightforward, though no less important – at a price tag that is proportionate and that works for them.

Our Tax Preparation Success Story

Canwest grew organically over the years through word-of-mouth referrals and the purchase and consolidation of two bookkeeping practices due to retirement. Sharlane Bailey (the current owner) has been central to that success story – having joined them in 2004; she bought the business in 2011. Under her leadership, the company now offers a team of 15 accounting professionals and solid ‘bench strength’ across multiple disciplines – tax preparation and filing being foremost.

Low-Cost Tax Preparation Services Re-defined

According to Sharlane, Canwest’s success is based on an unswerving customer service ethos and a thirst for identifying and servicing specific niche markets better than anyone else. Affordable Tax Services occupies one such niche within an otherwise already crowded market for economic income tax preparation and filing services – but with a fundamentally different approach.

The Affordable Tax Services difference is its challenge to existing tax preparation models which characterize this space. Ours is a superior, value-based solution rooted in ‘light-touch’ consulting, anchored around an efficient diagnostic and delivery model born of a laser focus on customer needs and underpinned by trust and transparency.

Affordable Tax Services is the antidote to a confusing array of franchised tax preparation services or local ‘mom-and-pop’ shops, each offering tax preparation services of variable quality and uncertain pricing.

Meantime, Affordable Tax Services sets itself apart from the pack of other reputable local full-service accounting and bookkeeping firms that have yet to move with the times and adapt. These bastions of otherwise solid and trustworthy practices offer a ‘sledgehammer to crack and nut’; over-engineered fee-based tax preparation services that are inappropriate and attract too high a price tag.

We say this with utmost certainty because we’ve been there.

We were once part of the problem and not the solution. Years of experience preparing tax returns and faced with a plethora of alternative low-cost providers with below-par offers, Affordable Tax Services resolved to do better and change up the model.

Sharlane and her team have now succeeded where others have failed. She says…

“We get it. We analyzed client needs in the space and isolated the key components necessary to a successful low-cost tax preparation service. One that fulfils most needs, most of the time for those with straightforward tax affairs – people with just one or two tax slips, a simple income profile and a handful of allowances or benefits.

There’s an adage that sometimes ‘less is more’. Our minimalist process is simple for clients to understand and easy for our tax consultants and clients to navigate together. The result is a credible, value-based, no-frills alternative at a competitive price – with no hidden surprises…

…and of course, ‘if’ it transpires a client has more complex needs [and it’s a big IF] we identify that at the outset and have the accounting chops to handle whatever is thrown at us – but these are the exceptions, not the rule…