With kids, a 1099 business, and assets overseas, we were not comfortable filing our 2013 taxes throughTurboTax as we had done in years past. Jeff Brown was able to take us on as clients late in the game, which was great considering that most CPAs won't take on any new business during the busy tax season.
A series of things happened with Jeff Brown which I consider to be unprofessional and truly made us question his attention to detail (which you kind of want in a CPA, right?), but the reason I'm writing this review really boils down to his glib and confrontational response when we pointed out the mistakes he made and the impact it had on our numbers.
A quick summary of his transgressions:
1. Despite his office confirming our appointment with us 1-2 days beforehand, he forgot about it and consequently showed up to our meeting an hour late.
2. Returns were sent to us 2 weeks later than promised, and the day before they were due (to avoid further late penalties).
3. First draft of the return sent to us contained an obvious omission, which we had to ask him to correct (for our 1099-DIVs, he entered the financial institutions' names but failed to enter the dividend amounts). Correction was then made to the return to the tune of another $2,265 that we owed the Fed.
4. Last minute scramble asking for information to go into the tax return that we had already provided to him weeks prior.
5. After #3 above was fixed, we got a revised tax return, which was submitted to the tax authorities. When our State refund check arrived, it was $270 less than we expected. I contacted Jeff to ask why that would be, and his response was: "Not sure how we missed this." What happened was he transposed numbers.
We understand that humans make mistakes. And we obviously understand that it's not Jeff Brown's fault that we owe the government what we owe. What I take issue with is that I expect a professional CPA who is entrusted with our family's personal financial information to take it seriously enough to review the information we send to him, and more importantly, to review his work! We are relying on -- correction: paying for -- his expertise.
I sent Jeff Brown an email detailing the above and our dismay at the quality of service provided. His response was that each point was debatable (actually, it's 100% true). He maintains our returns were prepared "accurately and without error" (despite the fact the State of California corrected his transposition mistake and reduced our refund accordingly). Then he contradicted himself in the next sentence by saying "You point out that the amount of tax payments that were reported on your tax return were incorrect. I agree - but this error does not result in any harm to you." ... Apart from our State refund being reduced by $270.
His mistakes on our return aside,I do not take kindly to his snark. Rather than taking responsibility for anything, he responded to me as if I were his 4-year-old child, saying that he will "completely ignore the email I sent and allow me to re-send my email free of insults."
There is a fundamental professional chip missing with this accountant, and every potential client should beware. read more
