I REALLY wanted to like Jay because he has mutual friends! But, after the job completed and complete lack of customer service, I cannot recommend him.
In my opinion, he must be too busy! I don't think it would be wise for him to accept new clients.
Several disappointing things happened in this experience.
It started off with my dropping off my tax documents in February. His front office staff contacted me soon after to tell me that only $2,500 of deductions would be applied for the 2022 instead of $98,000 because they didn't understand how long term capital gains taxes work!
This issue was fixed but it stressed me out thinking it wasn't going to be right because I had to explain it to them.
Jay left off thousands of dollars in deductions on charitable donations which he had the receipts for and which were included in an orderly fashion. It was fixed when I pointed it out but I FOUND the issues myself. Why am I paying an accountant to make HUGE financial mistakes? The difference in my tax bill had I not found the mistakes was roughly $1500 that I would owe (between federal and state!) That's significant!!!!
Several times in the process, I'd ask a question and he'd meet with me a..."this form would need to be filled out. Do you want me to fill it out?" Well...I want you to fill out whatever necessary forms need to be filled out! Considering this is your job, you should know the proper forms and make it happen. Never have I ever had to tell my accountant what form I want them to fill out.
With my previous accountant, he would call me to go over things to make sure we were on the same page and to clear up any issues. I only changed from him because 1) he was scared of Covid and didn't want to meet in person and 2) he had made a few errors. But goodness, at least he was quick to call me, apologize, and immediately fix the issue.
Well, I sent Jay an email asking if we could go over it since he wasn't there when I picked it up the first time. To which he responded "he's just too busy this time of year to meet with people."
Yet, he wasn't too busy to send me a $650 invoice for an incorrect tax job.
$50 of this invoice was for a meet & greet where he basically sold himself to me on how aggressive he is and how he will ask all of the right questions, etc.
Mind you during the actual process, I had to ask ALL of the questions, find the mistakes, and basically do the work.
It was an expensive fee for very little communication (emails could go a week without being answered), very few of my questions being answered, errors galore, and a 2 month long tax process.
In the end, he did make the changes but it was not an efficient process. We had to pick up our documents twice since they don't do anything electronically either. It was the most expensive accountant bill that I ever received, with the least amount of work done. And, I received my corrected taxes back 2 days before the deadline. Talk about stressful.
I would have been better off using Turbo Tax and doing it myself. This was an expensive lesson learned! read more