SIDNEY — It’s been 50 years since Betty Schulze, of Sidney, put a table on her enclosed front porch and a sign in her yard announcing that Schulze Tax Service was open for business.
She had graduated from Holy Angels High School four years earlier and completed a LaSalle University correspondence course in accounting and taxes. She left a job at Copeland to raise a family.
“Taxes were something you could do at home,” she said. Besides, “I loved figures. I loved the tax stuff.” She had 33 clients in 1967.
“I charged $3 and made $99 that year,” she said.
In the five decades since, the porch has disappeared, the house has expanded, the staff has increased, the price has gone up and the number of clients has grown many times over.
Schulze still feels the same as she did when she began.
“She loves what she does,” said daughter and fellow accountant Marcia Montgomery, of Sidney. And she loves that to get to work or to get back home again, all she needs to do is walk through a hallway door. Schulze’s Tax Service is right where it has always been, 422 Buckeye Ave., and Schulze still lives there, too.
“We’ve had clients come help us shovel snow,” she laughed.
Her husband, Ray, added a kitchen, bathroom, family room, utility room and a two-and-a-half-car garage to the original house. The family moved into the addition and what had been the house became office space for what eventually developed into a family business.
Montgomery, has been an employee for 22 years. A niece works there, too, and Ray, who retired in 2001, now has his wife for a boss.
There has always been an informal feel to the place. When Schulze’s mother was alive, she liked to watch basketball games on television. The living room was the waiting room for tax clients, so they’d watch basketball, too. When Schulze grandchildren arrived, they would stay nearby while their moms helped with accounting work.
“Clients would come in and say, ‘Can I hold her?’ They would pick up a baby and get their taxes done,” Schulze said.
This year, 16 people will help those clients meet the April 18 deadline. Many of them have been employees for a long time. Some are new.
“I never advertise for an employee. I always want to get somebody someone has known. People I know I can trust, I’ve brought into the business,” Schulze said.
They all attend an annual seminar at the University of Northwestern Ohio in November and participate in IRS online webinars to get up to speed on changes in tax regulations. There have been a lot of changes over the years. One of the biggest is among the most recent: the Affordable Care Act, with its requirement that taxpayers show proof of health insurance.
The advent of computers and online filing has made a faster process of completing returns. Schulze got her first computer in 1983. Along with the speed of filing, the computer has eliminated another concern.
“We don’t have to worry about storage space, ” Schulze said.
The worry now is security.
“Hackers are trying to hack names and Social Security numbers. Ours is masked. Nobody can see Social Security numbers. I have as much security as you can get,” she said. Schulze requires clients to show a photo ID when they come in to drop off tax materials and when they come back to pick up the finished returns. Taxpayers must also sign forms to certify that the information they have provided to the preparers is true.
She still has her first copy machine, acquired in the 1970s. It folds into a suitcase and uses a standard size light bulb to make one copy at a time. Even that was an improvement over the carbon paper that Schulze used in the early years.
But its not the office machines and technology that confront clients who come to office. It’s Schulze’s collections of items that decorate almost every inch of her workspace. The collections are so vast and varied, it’s hard to imagine that a client would concentrate on his tax information while visiting there.
Cases built by Ray line the walls from desk height almost to ceiling. They are filled, in the outer office, with bells; in Schulze’s office, with miniature pencil sharpeners of every stripe. Advertising gimmicks, souvenirs, and what look like knickknacks all hide sharpeners in their shapes.
A voracious reader, Schulze got the first ones at an auction, where she bought a box of books. She had to take a box of pencil sharpeners, too, and the hunt was on.
Door and wall space not filled with display cases is covered in amusing signs. A friend gave her the first one. She and Ray took it from there.
“I like a good sign,” Schulze said. “I have so many now, it’s hard to find a place to put them.” She’s a big Ohio State Buckeyes fan, so there are lots of scarlet and gray memorabilia.
“I like the Begals. I’ll root for the Browns. I like the Dayton Flyers, too. When the Bearcats were around, I rooted for them,” she said. Signs of her fandom are everywhere.
A metal strip just below the ceiling sports end-to-end magnets all around the room. Another 400 are in the attic, waiting their turn to be displayed. Above the magnets, on the molding rests an entire village of two-dimensional, painted, wooden buildings — landmarks from Sidney and around the country.
Schulze and her husband have traveled in every state but two, and their favorite thing to do is visit flea markets.
“We’ve been to the largest one — in Canton, Texas. That was pretty big,” she said.
Taking trips is what happens when tax season is over; although, the office remains open year-round. The staff is always ready to meet new clients.
To make an appointment, call 498-5125.
