Very Old School

100 y.o. tax preparer Else Rike (Hagerty/WSJ)

The WSJ features nonagenerian and even centenarian tax preparers: [bold added]

After more than 70 years as an independent tax preparer, [100 y.o. Else M.] Rike knows how to pace herself. She aims to finish at least three returns a day in the weeks before April 15.

Unlike other tax preparers, she doesn’t rely on software to guide her choice of deductions and exemptions or to do the sums. Instead, she punches keys on a Sharp desktop calculator, setting a tiny roll of printing paper atwirl, and then uses an electric typewriter to enter the numbers onto Internal Revenue Service forms.

“I’m not that tech-oriented,” she says. “I don’t have the computer figure it out. I do my own figuring.” Ever since childhood, she says, “math was always sort of my thing.”

Rike (pronounced Ricky) does have a computer, but she uses it only to print out forms. She doesn’t use email but does answer her cellphone or landline. To keep up with tax law, she relies heavily on a fat paperback, “U.S. Master Tax Guide.”

Mrs. Rike, like I do, subscribes to the Master Tax Guide. The MTG is sufficient for basic technical needs, and any problems it can't answer probably means the taxpayer needs to hire a specialist (e.g., closely held companies, foreign income, oil and gas) in that particular area. Specialists can be very expensive, and Mrs. Rike's price is right for her retired clientele:

“I don’t charge like others. I kind of try to do it by the hours that I put in or the number of pages of their returns,” she says. Most clients pay between $50 and $150. That includes a set of envelopes for estimated taxes, with the address labels neatly affixed.

At one point, Rike had around 300 customers. Now she has outlived most of them and serves about 80, including the children of former clients. “I don’t do too many difficult ones anymore,” she says. “I do mostly retired people.”

Her customers are loyal, and she enjoys her work. She has found what we are all searching for...life's purpose.