In 2012, with 5 month old twins in tow, my husband and I went to Roy Rasmussen Accounting for help with our taxes. We had married the year before, and my husband was missing one of his W-2's. Rasmussen suggested we file "married filing separately" to "get the ball rolling" since I had all of my information, and my husband did not. We agreed, but we are not tax professionals, and had no idea the sh*t storm that the IRS would make our life in the coming YEARS. We ended up owing a crazy amount of money to Utah and Federal that year, which we had not paid nearly that much ($thousands$) ever before on my income in the past. He quickly dismissed our questions about disability, giving flat answers about the enormous amount we owed, never exploring any deductions we were eligible for.
Fast forward a year, after already paying thousands to Utah and California in state taxes, and sorting out the details of our Federal taxes. 2013 taxes we completed with a different firm, no problems.
We were told to do an ammendment to fix the problems from 2012, but by this time, however, the IRS was calling us every day asking for the full amount from the 2012 year that Roy Rasmussen facilitated. It was a nightmare. They said we owed over $5500, and they couldn't do a payment plan with us until our 2011 taxes were sorted out. (Apparently they were not.) Finally, in total desperation, we paid the full amount on credit cards, because it seemed to be an unfixable situation, even though we knew it was wrong.
Not only did this strain us financially, but we were completely at a loss as to how to back track and ammend our situation with the IRS. We struggled for 2 more years, more or less at the mercy of the IRS because we couldn't correct a previous return filed by Rasmussen. Calling his office did no good, he gave us condescending instructions that weren't at all compatible with the return we filed, putting all the work on our plate. In fact, the only time he reached out to contact us was to tell us to bring payment to his office, which we did the same day.
It has now been 4 years since our experience with Roy Rasmussen Accounting. We were tangled in a messy IRS battle that dated back to the year we filed with Rassmussen. I was getting franchise taxed by the state of California for thousand via auto deduction. Poof! Money was just gone for no reason. By the time we found Debi MacComb at Linda's Tax Service, we were stressed out and on the brink of separation. Thank God Debi knew what she was doing, and meticulously reviewed the past 4 years, including helping us COMMUNICATE with the IRS and getting the bottom of the ammending taxes and mistakes from years prior.
We are just now untangling from the mess that began the day we sat down in Roy Rasmussen's office. The nightmare is finally coming to an end, with letters from the State of Utah and the Federal IRS stating "your tax return was reviewed for math errors which resulted in a refund." The mistake was to the tune of around $8K, plus about 15K more saved by a tax credit Debi made us aware of. We are relieved to be cleared, and we are now finally able to sleep through the night. We have learned a valuable lesson: Never go to a tax accountant who does not listen, does not work on your behalf to communicate with the IRS, doesn't understand the implications of a married couple filing separately for no good reason, doesn't understand the difficulty of filing an ammendment when the previous tax year is outstanding. Most of all, to listen to our gut. We both had a bad feeling when Rassmussen shot down our concerns about disability and high maternity/delivery expenses, and on and on. I hope this cautionary tale helps one person avoid the nightmare tax preparer that is Roy Rassmussen Accounting. read more
