Tax preparer keeps his business mobile

Friday, April 9, 2004 | 4:23 a.m.

line By Jace Radke LAS VEGAS SUN

WEEKEND EDITION

April 10 - 11, 2004

LAS VEGAS SUN

Several drop sites are available for residents to mail in last-minute tax returns.

If postage is needed, visit the James C. Brown Jr, Main Office at 1001 E. Sunset Road.

If postage is not needed, tax forms can be dropped off at the following post offices until 10 p.m.

Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino is partnering with the postal service to provide another drop site for customers. A free entrance voucher, good for one free admission to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, will be given for mailing tax forms at a temporary "Shark Reef Station," open Thursday from noon-10 p.m.

The station will be staffed with post office personnel. Postal clerks will sell stamps, and a postal scale will be available to ensure proper postage is applied.

The post office will collect and postmark income tax returns until midnight Thursday at the main office on Sunset Road. The retail windows there will be open from 7:30 a.m. until midnight.

The Internal Revenue Service will also participate in the "Tax Day" event. From 5:30 to 11 p.m., a representative will be on hand at the main post office to assist customers with last-minute tax advice.

Extension forms also will be available at the main post office on Sunset Road for customers who cannot meet the Thursday tax filing deadline.

It's nice work if you can get it.

Owen O'Neill wears a T-shirt, shorts and a pair of flip-flops to his office, which is a motor home. He crisscrosses the country, following the path of snowbirds. Even nomadic retirees have to file tax returns.

While many Las Vegans will be scrambling to get tax extensions from the local IRS office or braving the lines at the post office next week, O'Neill will be kicking back in a motor home park south of the Las Vegas Strip after electronically filing taxes for about 150 clients.

O'Neill, a 53-year-old retired Navy doctor, targets the tax business of retirement age wanderers whom he meets as he, his wife, Terry, and their dog, Star, a miniature American Eskimo, travel the country.

"Doing the research and figuring out taxes is a lot of fun for me, and it puts a little extra money in the bank," O'Neill said, while sitting outside his motor home at Smith's Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort. "Being a full-time RVer is about having fun and not being stressed. The IRS is synonymous with terror for people, so I try to teach my clients that it's really not so bad once you understand it."

O'Neill has been living in his Alfa motor home for the past four years, and a month or two in Las Vegas is usually on his itinerary. A 2000 graduate of UNLV's accounting program, O'Neill has been preparing taxes for about four years.

"I was with H&R Block, but it was interfering with our travel plans," O'Neill said. "Now I just need a phone line and I'm ready to go."

O'Neill uses a laptop computer that sits on a small desk between his couch and dining room table in his motor home. He files taxes electronically, and whenever he pulls into a new park he puts out a small sign in front of his motor home that reads, "O'Neill's Tax Service."

"It hasn't been difficult to get clients, it has just kind of spread by word of mouth," O'Neill said. "I make sure I send out my schedule of where I'm going to be in the winter and spring, and people can either meet me along the way or mail their information to my post office box."

Those who wait until the last minute to file their taxes in Las Vegas will be met by additional post office employees, who will man the drop-off points at local post offices on April 15. The IRS will also have extra staffers on hand this week at its office on Oakey Boulevard near Decatur Boulevard, IRS Special Agent Mercedes Manzur said.

While long lines and the usual tax day chaos ensue, O'Neill will be preparing to move on to the Northwest, chasing the 70-degree weather that he follows around the country.

"We may hit Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone," O'Neill said. "We go everywhere. You haven't lived until you've spent two days eating tamales at the Indio (Calif.) tamale festival."