Client Letter Lesson Writing Client Letters Tax professionals differ in their approaches to client letters. This lesson briefly discusses a few issues that professionals should consider to assure that the client letter is effective in communicating research findings and conclusions. Failure to consider these points may result in client confusion or dissatisfaction. In short, tax professionals who conduct exemplary research but do not appropriately communicate findings and conclusions to the end user, the client, lose much of their effectiveness and increase their practice risk.
Some tax professionals prepare short cover letters and attach executive-style reports.
Others include all their tax research findings and conclusions within the actual letter. Generally, the lengthier the findings and conclusions, the more likely a short letter with a separate report will be the most effective presentation. A more important issue relates to the tax sophistication of the client and, thus, the writing style that the tax professional should adopt. Obviously, tax sophistication is a sliding scale, and the writing style should be tailored to each client. However, our discussion here focuses on clients at opposite ends of the scale.