Michael S.
1/5
Ms. Stern sent me my federal and state tax returns for review before she transmitted them to the respective agencies. I approved them, however she sent something different to the agencies than what she sent me, returns with mistakes. The State was the first to detect the errors. The State knew how much I had paid in quarterly pre-payments, and they contacted me and made the adjustments. When I emailed Ms. Stern about this, she responded that this is what we had discussed, which made no sense at all. Why would we under-report what I actually paid? Her email was short and dismissive. I decided to let it go since the State fixed the error.
The bigger problem came with the IRS. When they received the return, they wanted me to verify my identity over the phone by going through the line items and comparing the figures I had with the figures on the return they had received from Ms. Stern. The numbers did not match! I had to make an appointment with the IRS, which is not an easy thing to do. I had to go into an IRS office and present myself. I brought with me the tax return Ms. Stern prepared, and with the IRS agent we compared what she had actually sent. There were discrepancies. On the return Ms. Stern gave me, I would receive a $9,769 refund - which is correct. However on the return she sent the IRS, she had me owing $35,605.
Throughout this ordeal, over a period of weeks, I was emailing Ms. Stern, and her email replies were always short and dismissive. She claims the IRS and the State both independently made mistakes on my returns. This is just not possible. How can two independent agencies make similar mistakes on separate returns? And each agency verified with me that Ms. Stern had been the person who sent them the return. This ordeal has cost me more than 20 hours of wasted time not to mention all the anxiety associated with not knowing how to resolve these problems. Jan stopped responding to my emails, and she has not once accepted a phone call from me.
I have filed a complaint with the Enforcement Unit at the California Board of Accountancy, and it is currently pending. People make mistakes, but to not accept responsibility for mistakes, to dump the burden of figuring this out on my own is unacceptable. On the bright side, both the State of California and the IRS have been most helpful! I always thought that if I ever had a tax problem, my accountant would be there to help me. Quite the opposite has happened, the IRS and the State have been there for me to help me with a problem with my accountant. Go figure.
