If you're looking for the best accountant in San Antonio, keep looking. Jodie Schuh of Jodie Schuh…read moreand Associates is the furthest thing from it.
I went to her in March 2015 to have my business and personal taxes prepared.
I received the business tax paperwork on August 30, 2015. How can it take five months to prepare taxes for a small biz with less than $100K in revenue?
I received the personal tax paperwork on September 24, 2015. How can it take six months to prepare a simple personal return?
Between March and the time when these two returns were finally prepared, I e-mailed Ms. Schuh numerous times asking when they would be done. The responses I received--when I wasn't ignored--included:
"It will have to wait until after the (fill in the month) 15 deadline."
"I'll be at continuing education next week."
"I'll get them done as soon as possible."
"I'm on vacation this week."
When she prepared our personal return, my husband and I were dismayed to discover we owed a little more than $2,000. I hadn't paid enough in quarterly estimated taxes, and my husband's withholding was too low.
Had our taxes been prepared soon after I first went to Jodie Schuh and Associates, we could've increased his withholding then, and I could've started paying more per quarter. Because it took her six months to get it done, that's six months where we probably weren't paying enough, so we may have another tax bill in 2016. Ms. Schuh's procrastination, indifference, lack of professionalism, and failure to do her job will likely end up costing us more money.
In addition, had our taxes been filed in March or April when my business was still open, we could've paid the bill and been done with it. Because of her failure, we got that bill when money was especially tight.
Jodie Schuh's failure to prepare our taxes in a timely manner also caused a lot of stress, as if taxes weren't stressful enough, right?
I closed my business in June 2015, so now there was a final return to file, which I asked Ms. Schuh to do. I figured it would be easier than finding a new accountant. I was wrong. I provided Jodie Schuh and Associates with our bookkeeping in June. That return was never prepared.
Once again, Ms. Schuh continually put me off. I emailed over and over, asking when it would be done. In a couple of emails, I practically begged her to please just get it done so we could all move on. Her responses were usually rude, and she continued to make excuses for the delay.
It wasn't until November--once again, five months after the initial request for tax preparation was made--that she even looked at the spreadsheet. And then there was a problem. Some of the numbers didn't add up correctly.
I went over it line by line. My business partner did the same. We couldn't find the errors. I asked Ms. Schuh to please help. I got no response. I emailed again to ask what we could do. She emailed back, and pointed out a couple of payments that seemed to add up to the missing amount.
The payments she had pointed out did add up to the missing amount--because I had mistakenly entered them in the spreadsheet twice.
If Ms. Schuh were paying attention, if she were any kind of good accountant, and if she was able to see those two payments were causing a problem, why couldn't she see they'd been entered twice? No, I didn't see it at first, either. But I made the mistake in the first place. And I'm not an accountant.
I decided to test her. I corrected the errors, but I also changed an amount on the spreadsheet. If she hadn't been able to identify the other errors, would she see this one? Miraculously, she did. But once again, rather than trying to help, she told me to find what was wrong.
At this point, I'd had it. I'd been dealing with Jodie Schuh for eight months for three simple tax returns that should've been done, literally, months ago. She'd been rude, unhelpful, and was doing nothing but causing stress.
I emailed Ms. Schuh and told her we may not be as big as some of her other clients, but that doesn't justify treating us this way, and if we were too small for Jodie Schuh and Associates, she shouldn't have taken us on to begin with. I told her she'd cost us money with her delays, that she'd caused us stress, and that I'd asked her to help, and she didn't seem willing.
Ms. Schuh's response was, "You can get someone else to do the return. I have nothing but a spreadsheet prepared by you to work from so there is no way I 'can help' correct your errors." (see photo)
She had told me all she needed was the spreadsheet. If she needed more, she could've asked and I would've provided it. But to first ignore my plea for help, and then respond in this rude manner is unacceptable.
So I will take that return elsewhere, to another San Antonio accountant, and never do business with Jodie Schuh and Associates again. Save yourself a lot of stress, time and money, and stay away from Jodie Schuh. There are plenty of other accountants in San Antonio to choose from.
