Our accountant ghosted us

[Erin Mullaney]

I found an accountant in 2017 after I started contracting (leaving my W2 job to work for myself). He was FANTASTIC: he spent hours on the phone with me and answered all my questions. I gave him 5 stars on Thumbtack. He also did our personal taxes, for me and my husband, each year, in addition to being my business accountant.

Fast forward to 2022. We send him our personal documents for our taxes, everything by March 2022 or so. He sends us the doc to sign that says he'll do our taxes etc. We sign it and pay him to do our personal taxes. He stops replying to our emails. We email him about twice a month. He emails us back sporadically "I'll file these next week!" etc. In July, we ask him for a refund, we'll just file our taxes with someone else. He says, no refund, but I'll complete them now and is very snarky and mean (not AT ALL like he was in 2017, complete personality change!) So ok, he sends us the draft of our taxes for state and federal and we sign it. He says he's now cutting ties with us. Ok, whatever. (We are very chill people, trust me, this is all him).

We still haven't received our refunds as of September (after a supposed July filing) so we check in with IRS and our local state. He never filed anything. So not only was he a total jerk to us over email, he also never filed our taxes. So now we're out a few hundred dollars (his fee) and filing with someone else. 

Anything else we can do? I looked him up on Thumbtack and updated my review to one star. I found a similar review from yesterday that he did the same thing to someone else. But he's not really on Thumbtack actively now and I can't find him listed anywhere else. He does have a website: yourtechcpa.com but I see no other way to review him.

[Michael Plaks]

Here is a red flag: "He was FANTASTIC: he spent hours on the phone with me and answered all my questions" especially when followed by "a few hundred dollars (his fee)."

There is no way someone who charges a few hundred dollars for taxes can stay in business if he also spends hours on the phone with his clients. Maybe he just started on his own in 2017 and did not realize it was an unsustainable business model. Maybe, as @Bruce Woodruff suggested, something happened on his end.

Either way, with your new accountant, it's very important to establish compatible expectations from the start. Especially in regards to spending hours on the phone. For example, in my firm, the clients with whom we spend hours on the phone pay us several thousand, not several hundred dollars.