What Are Your Horror Stories?

What Are Your Horror Stories?

I’ll bet you have Tax Horror Stories.  Were you frustrated with your accountant or your CPA firm because they wouldn’t return your phone calls or answer your questions?  Were you forced to do your own taxes because nobody was taking on new clients, or because CPA firms charge way too much for a simple return?  OR were you the recipient of bad tax advice that cost you thousands?  Now, THAT’S a Horror Story! 

Since it’s October, I thought I could share some of the Horror Stories I’ve heard recently from my clients.  These highlight the fact that there are very few tax professionals available to serve the number of taxpayers, and, worse, many of those who are working in the field are not properly advising or accurately representing their clients.  For brevity’s sake, I’ll share only a couple illustrations here today, and then a few more later in the month.  

A new client in the construction business had his taxes done over the past few years by a CPA firm, then by a national chain, and each year for the last three years they had him paying $10,000 in taxes.  We amended his 2023 and 2022 returns, and instead of owing $10,000 each year, he only owed $1400 and $1000 respectively (a tax savings of $17,600, so far).  We are still working on 2021, but by taking appropriate care to find the missing deductions (those that were not utilized), this amended tax return will produce the same result and we will get him a sizable refund.  His former tax preparers did not take depreciation of any kind for construction equipment, or any deductions for the home office, and other Schedule C expenses were missed entirely.   

We have another new client whose former CPA produced a 2023 tax return for his household in which they owed $14,200.  We amended the return and produced a new return that had them paying only $2800 (a tax savings of $11,400).  The former CPA chose the wrong method for calculating the automobile deduction.  Additionally, there was no home office deduction taken for business owner.   

These two Horror Stories show how you can end up PAYING WAY TOO MUCH in taxes when your accountant is not on the ball.  Fortunately, we can correct these mistakes.  We would love to change your tax horror story into a happier story, so why don’t you bring us your past two years of tax returns?