Leading A Double Life
Who is Tom Oden?

Tom Oden has been living a double life for more than 30 years. The dilemma is trying to determine his “day job” from his “sideline.”

Oden began working at Ford Motor Company in 1973. At the same time, he was attending classes at the Detroit Business Institute for his second career, which since 1975 has been preparing tax returns from his home in Inkster, Michigan.

“At Ford I worked primarily the third shift on the production line,” he says. “I got home at 11 p.m. and did taxes for a few hours, went to bed, got up the next morning and did more 1040s until
I had to go back to work.”

Oden is a jack-of-all-trades. His services include an extensive range of accounting, bookkeeping and tax preparation for small businesses, partnerships and corporations. He offers complete individual tax and electronic filing services, offering direct deposit and Super Quick Refund loans (RAL). Oden is a notary and an Enrolled Agent (EA) representing taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service.

“I don’t have a specialty,” he says. “I do something of everything. However, the majority of my work is preparing Form 1040 individual returns.”

The business officially opened as Oden Tax & Bookkeeping Services in 1995. He retired from Ford in 2003 as a floor inspector. With between 350 and 400 clients, he considered moving the business out of the basement of his home into a rented office. Besides concerns about overhead expense, he felt such a change would alter the personal nature of the services he provides.

“Some clients have told me that if I move out they’ll find someone else,” Oden says. “I spend time with my clients and they like the homey atmosphere. We can sit in my living room surrounded by my plants and collection of stuffed animals, and maybe listen to gospel music. I go through the details of their returns and explain the tax changes before they occur. I keep them well informed. They don’t think they’ll get the same courtesy in an office that they get in my home.”

So how did Oden go from Ford’s assembly line to tax preparation?

His journey began in high school, and his career has always been propelled by a natural curiosity.

“In school I loved math,” he says. “I originally got into taxes because I was curious about what happens to FICA, the Social Security tax. I started in 1975 with close friends and family members, and the business just grew from there. I’m still curious. I attend several tax seminars every year. Some are sponsored by the National Association of Tax Professionals and the National Center for Professional Education. Each year I go to Las Vegas for the American Academy of Tax Practice.”

The Drake Connection
In 1998, Oden was still sending tax forms to a friend who filed them electronically. The acquaintance told him he should be doing this himself or he’d lose clients, and introduced him to Drake software. Oden purchased the Drake tax software suite and has never looked back.

“Drake’s Professional Tax Solution has all the federal and state forms and schedules,” he says. “There are no separate modules or hidden costs. I have all individual and business return capabilities as well as all states, e-filing, client write-up and bank software. I save everything in Drake’s document manager. The system works real well. I can even e-mail documents to clients if they prefer. Printing tax documents is time consuming.”

Oden says Drake software is very easy to use, and the product support is tremendous.

“At first I had issues with client write-up,” he adds, “but the people at Drake walked me through the program over the phone to make sure it was working correctly. If they tell me they’ll call back after doing some research, they call me back and make sure I’m satisfied. And best of all, software updates are handled electronically. They are automatically downloaded to my server.”

New Direction
As the Federal standard deduction continues to increase, Form 1040s are becoming easier to fill out as fewer taxpayers itemize deductions. In an effort to grow his business and because of client requests, Oden has begun preparing Form 1041s for estate taxes and trusts.

“For me, the transition was easy because I like the challenge,” he says. “I like getting into a different phase of taxes.”

Family Oriented
Oden, a 61-year-old bachelor, has four brothers and one sister. The second youngest in the family, he is in charge of the reunion held every other year. In off years, he travels to visit all his relatives. His sister lives in Michigan, two brothers live in Florida, one in West Virginia and one in North Carolina. When he’s not on the road, Oden will be in his basement office by 7 a.m. preparing tax forms.

“Staying on top of all the changes makes tax preparation interesting to me,” he says. “My strength is using the latest software and staying on top of the tax law changes. I’m still learning; I like stay busy.”

From January 2007

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