Straight off, I believe Steve 'knows' his job/profession well enough. I, and apparently he, have philosophical 'differences in how a professional office should conduct it's 'billing'. Steve's charges for 'his' fees, while at first seemed straight forward, he quoted what we though would be a 'total' fee in a seemingly straightforward manner. Seemingly. However, Steve charges additional fees for any front office time, be that when a telephone receptionist answers the phone and you need to have a 'question' answered in order to get that to the CPA, or in response to a question from the CPA, or a question or task, apparently get sent off into the office labrinth, taking other staff time. Huh? All these other 'services' are charged a different rate than Steves, and though there should be an itemized billing for these charges, Steve apparently does not believe he needs to provide an itemized billing, despite those billings being included onto his overall bill, which increases the cost of the voiced, agreed upon 'fee'. As anyone who has their own business, and files taxes, itemizing costs, needing receipts for various deductions, etc, are important. So, anyway, I asked for an itemization, and the staff routed that request to him. Following that he provided a written letter, and that began a short, terse communication set between he and me. He explained in his letter "The minimum fee is $250 without an appointment and $330 with an appointment. The final amount of the fee will be based on the complexity and amount of time required to fully complete the tax return preparation service". Agreed. He and I had come to a fee for my preparation more than $330. In my 40 plus years of using a CPA, I've never paid extra for the front office getting an answer to a question, whether from or to the CPA about the tax filing. It is different with Steves' office. Steve is quite forceful about not providing any itemization for the various 'other' service fees on the billing, other than his fee. In a partial hand written response by him, to me, he responds "Shame on me for not being more clear. Unless you want me to make something up - We do not (underlined) itemize our time without regard to the details." His response was rude, inconsiderate and out of place. His ending paragraph: "We feel that if you trust us to complete your tax return accurately, you should also trust the fact we charge our clients fairly. If you do not agree, maybe another firm would suit you better." Now that is something Steve and I agree upon. We appointed with another CPA, who responds to information questions about the filing, as it is info the CPA needs, as part of the total inquiry to complete the tax filing, and does not bit charge for front office seconds or minutes to cycle that to the CPA, or back. read more