Kara gave us advice and helped us start our LLC (how to do it on our own so we do not get charged a…read morelot of money for an account or CPA to do it). She was knowledgeable about starting a small business with an LLC, so I will give her that, but after working with her more, my husband and I have decided she's just not what our business is looking for, especially since we are now growing. We were happy with her service in the start but overtime it was just not up to par. Yes, she can advise on how to start an LLC on our own and do our tax returns, but that is it. If you are looking for someone to help you plan ahead for your business for tax strategies and tax planning, this may not be the place. We only ever heard from her for our returns and that was it. Upon going with another company, we also discovered some forms we did not file but were supposed to, which Kara did not inform us of. For tax returns, there is a portal to download your documents, but there is no "list" or things that we should consider uploading, so it can be a lot of back and forth on- send your expenses, send your mortgage, send this and that or cannot finalize return, etc. It just seems unorganized and if you're dreading taxes, this will make it worse. I also had a return for a different state in 2022 that was not filed (unsure why a different company omitted it). However, I decided to do it independently since Kara mentioned there would be a nominal fee if she did it because she does not know about another state's filing regulations. I asked the previous accounting company if it would cause any problems since it was omitted, and they said it would be ok since the IRS has a matching system and will send us a notification if anything was excluded so we could wait for that. Upon getting the notification, we can decide whether to make an amendment. Kara failed to mention that part. We felt she just wanted us to spend more money to have her do it or something. We moved from MY Personal CPA to her because yearly we would get a different tax preparer so we thought if we went with a smaller company (First Choice Accounting) we would get more personalized help but going with a one person team means getting emails at odd times like late at night and getting missed. Also, even though I did not go with Kara submitting my out of state return, I got charged a one-time $150 fee for Kara reviewing the 2022 tax return which I was not aware of. She was not upfront about the fact that there would be a charge when she asked if I could send her my 2022 return so she could look at it to figure out why the other state W2 was omitted. When I brought up that I was not expecting a charge, she did not reply to me. Finally, she always apologizes for responding late. Her cat got spayed, stayed up late, and was busy. You call her, and she doesn't pick up, but she will reply via email which increases more of the back and forth. This pretty much sums up why we are going with someone else even if we have to pay $400 to part from her since she said she already worked on our return even though she was still asking for documents and more clarification.
