Returning to mystery Shopping

Hello. During my graduate school years, I work as a mystery shopper/retail merchandiser. I had no problems finds assignments and companies looking for people that wanted to work. That was about 7 years ago. When I obtained my master's degree accounting, I thought that I wanted to be a CPA. However, as the time for graduation approached, this idea faded. I took a volunteer position and worked my way into management. The position wasn't year round but only during tax season. I thought my years of experience would be enough for employers to want to hire me. I loved my job so much that instead of becoming a CPA, I became an IRS Enrolled Agent. I branched off and created my own tax practice. But, I knew that I didn't want to just prepare taxes for a living, I wanted to represent taxpayers before the IRS. So, I dedicated my practice to helping taxpayers with major issues with the IRS and State taxing authorities. Now, I've decided to become a tax attorney. I shut down my practice so that I can devote most of my time to studying law. To make ends meet, I have returned to mystery shopping while I'm in law school and studying to pass the bar exam. I've decided that I need about $9,000 a year to support myself. Is this even possible as a professional mystery shopper?

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That totally depends on the time, skills and amount of travelling you can do. Video shopping I understand can pay quite well, but once you exhaust your local opportunities you need to become a road warrior to have work. As for regular mystery shopping, it is possible depending on your area and how much competition you may have. And of course it also depends on how much time you can spend looking for jobs, performing them and writing reports.

Many of the companies you were registered with before probably still have your registration available to update. Do you still have your passwords and logins? It may make sense to start back with them and see for yourself whether shopping would still be a viable option.
Thanks. But, I looked on my computer to see if I still had the contacts for the MSC's I worked with in the past. Sadly, I do not. So, I'll be starting over. I'm also interested in doing audits. Actually, I prefer audits. From what I'm reading, video is not recommended for people such as myself just getting started nor do I have the training or equipment for the assignment. For now, I'm sticking with shops and audits.
How about in your old tax records? You probably filed a Schedule C and probably put a copy of your backup data with that.

Edited to add: Did you use a different email address than your current one when you shopped? Chances are that if you can access that you will find a fair amount of contact information and that you used that email address as your login name with some password and could request a password reset from their login page.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2016 02:46AM by Flash.
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