Accountant did not file our taxes in the past 6 years

[Pradeep Bhatia]

My partner called me a week ago to inform me he spoke with our accountant and to his shock our company taxes were never filed since 2015. We met this accountant through our meditation centre when we were in Florida in early 2015. He advised us he files taxes for many investors, but since we were part of the same meditation group he would be happy to help and would file our taxes at no cost. We had a nice camaraderie with him on our handful of visits to Florida when we came to work on our properties.

Over the years, my partner compiled and sent the accountant the detailed Quickbook accounts as per his request as it would make filings easier. We did not get any messages back to indicate the taxes were not filed; as we were in deficit for the first few years, we did not expect anything was owing so when the accountant didn't say anything to us we didn't think much of it. 

We do not live in Florida (we're out of country) but visited our accountant several times in the past 7 years and he was very helpful when we needed to notarize documents or act as a trustee, etc. Now that I've sold several of the properties in the past year, I fully expected to pay taxes and I kept asking my partner to contact our accountant to see what was owing. It was only then we discovered nothing had ever been filed.

I'm not sure what options I have at this time as we had attempted to file our taxes properly every year.

Please advise.