I've never felt compelled to write a review before, and I'm usually not so dramatic, but my experience with Tony was among the worst service I've ever received. I'm genuinely surprised that there are so many positive reviews here (which was the reason I went to them in the first place).
tl;dr for my long, boring story about taxes: Tony took a multi-month vacation with zero warning in the middle of my urgent tax situation without passing the case along to someone else, which resulted in extra fees from the IRS. TaxPlus was consistently extremely disorganized, slow, and terrible at communication, and required persistent nagging to get anything done. The issues that I came to TaxPlus with remain unresolved, and they ceased all communication with me after I paid them, leaving me to resolve followup from the IRS and FTB on my own. I feel completely scammed out of the $2000 I spent there.
I have a small business, and for the last few years I foolishly tried to handle my tax returns myself using TurboTax, which turned into a mess, and my S-Corp ended up in bad standing with the FTB. So I decided to finally get help from a professional.
Things started off fine after contacting TaxPlus -- I emailed them on April 15th and had a consultation meeting a week or two later. Documents were requested and sent over, and authorization forms were signed.
Got a status update on May 1st and was asked to hold on while they worked on it. I emailed them a week later to ask if there was anything I needed to do on my end, and I received no response until the 19th, when Tony emailed me to tell me he was leaving on vacation until early / mid July (!)
I was concerned about the lengthy delay since the notices I had received from the FTB and IRS seemed quite urgent, so I replied, asking whether there would be any additional penalties or other issues, CCing Svetlana (who had also been involved in all of my email correspondence with Tony). No response whatsoever from either of them.
Two months pass with no response, and I finally followed up on July 19th to ask what was going on. I get a response from Tony telling me he'll work on it and should be able to meet the following week. More than a week passes with no communication, and on July 28th, sure enough, I receive an IRS notice with an extra $220 of fees.
I email the notice to Tony, which gets him to respond, and he tells me he will call me at 3pm. I'm sitting around, waiting for a call at 3, which comes and goes until I get an email at 3:30 asking me to call _him_ instead. When I call the number he gave me, somebody else picks up and tells me that he's not in the office. Eventually I manage to get connected to him and arrange another meeting for August 8th.
I get to the meeting, and once it starts, it's clear that Tony has not prepared at all. It's like he's starting from scratch as he reviews everything -- he goes over the same things that we went over in our initial meeting and asks me for information that I've already given him. I end up sitting there uncomfortably for something like two hours as he slowly makes his way through each tax return. He occasionally asks me questions, which I don't always have answers to on the spot. Why would we have a meeting like this instead of him doing this work on his own time and compiling a list of questions for me to answer via email so I have the time to answer them properly and don't have to sit in his office for hours?
The meeting finally ends, and it's supposedly all done. I pay them, and I'm told to follow up with any correspondence that I receive.
I don't receive anything until September 6th, when a neighbor passes along a refund I received from the FTB -- it turns out my apartment number was entered incorrectly on my amended returns. I emailed Tony to let him know, and he gets my address updated with the IRS, but I have to do it myself with the FTB. I have no idea how much correspondence I lost in the mean time.
On October 9th, I receive a notice about a balance due, and I try to run it by Tony but receive no response, so I just go ahead and pay it.
Finally, on October 23rd, I receive another notice, which is about some inscrutable issue with a form from one of the returns. Again I email Tony and receive no response, but this time I don't know what to do. I follow up on November 10th with no response yet again. The deadline for responding to the notice was coming up, so I just attempted to do it myself. The IRS responded, saying they needed more time to review the form. No idea if I did it properly or not -- we'll see I guess! read more