This is a belated review for Mark. I would give Mark 3.5 stars if this is an option. Since 2010, I started my journey of looking for suitable tax accountant. After sampling a solid pool of different accountants and experience various life events (rental property, major life events, marriage, death, school, new job, promotion, investment) I now feel more comfortable and qualified providing Mark a review.
To start, Mark is incredibly ethical guy and his assistant has been very polite / respectful. Another plus is, Mark's office is near UTC area which is very conveniently located and ample parking. Mark is very detail oriented and was very quick to figure out what other previous tax accountant's strategy is for rental property deduction/tax filing, etc.
From my perspective, Mark was slightly too conservative for me. When I look for a tax accountant, I am really paying for how much he can save me on taxes or help me plan out future tax strategy to avoid certain pitfall, and prevent me triggering an audit or do something incredibly stupid and get in trouble. Being first time client, I understand Mark has his reservation when he did my taxes. But when I made over $10,000 donation, I expect to claim such amount of deduction for my taxes, except Mark only claimed $3000 of my $10,000 for my 2012 taxes. I even had pictures of all the donation items because it was so impressive and receipt for all the donation from the organization, but Mark said this is not sufficient evidence.This is the year, I took some major losses for my rental property, not claiming legitimate donation to offset such losses really hurt me badly that year.
Therefore, I have great respect for Mark's integrity and professionalism but he is simply not the guy for me due to the fact that he is too overly conservative for long term tax strategy planning. Also to note, Mark charges by different type of forms and tend to be slightly on the pricier end. For someone who has an extremely complicated tax situation like me, I end up spending a fortune simply on tax preparation due to number of forms that needed to be filed. read more