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Originally Posted by babyzilla
Thanks to all of you for the affirmation and letting me know I'm not crazy. So after a lot of back and forth and basically a burned bridge, I paid her $500 because that's the most I was willing to pay even though I was expecting $300 at the most. She obviously did not like that. There are a couple things to note here. One, I did sign a legally binding contract that basically said we owe her whatever she charges (again, this was stupid of me in retrospect, but I never thought it would be this bad). Two, she explained how she had to do all these extra steps for us. My issue with this is some of you who responded clearly have a lot more to deal with and your filing costs seems completely reasonable, if not, low in some cases, so there's just no excuse for the $950 - I don't care what she says about that. Three, I could be wrong, but I couldn't walk away because she did complete her services and was ready to file. If I walked away that would have probably made matters worse and she has all our information.
All things considered, we are moving on with life and definitely with a different CPA. However, I am worried she may try to mess with our filing to get back at us and I would never know unfortunately. She emailed me "one final time" with all the reasons why it was $950 again and how she was rightful to charge that much and ended with "I will write off $450, the balance of your invoice, as a bad debt." I'm assuming this is for her internal bookkeeping for her business and not a collection agency on our behalf...can anyone confirm?
ARE THERE ANY TRUSTWORTHY CPAs IN THE PA/DMV AREA ON THIS FORUM??? Would be nice to know for the next go-around!
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She sounds like a piece of work. If she was willing to go down the price she knew she was overcharging. Our firm doesn't haggle on price because we know exactly how much it should cost and how much it will be everywhere else. As for the letter you sign, did it say you owed her the full amount no matter what? We have our clients sign an engagement letter which goes over the generalities of how all info you give to us is correct to your knowledge, wait time, we don't file until we have payment and signatures needed, etc.
Honestly my bet is she had something similar that required payment to file. We've had clients we prepare a return for where the invoice is anywhere from $500-$1000 and end up not liking the return and go somewhere else. It is what it is, sometimes you can't control that bit. From my understanding she shouldn't be able to hold your documents "hostage" but who knows, at least its settled. What I would do is have ask if she can send the proof of e-filing. There's two main software's tax firms use. Once a return is e-filed, it may take a day or so to be accepted by both the federal and state government. We don't send this to every client as it'd be a waste of time and we only contact them if there's an issue. If someone requests it, sure I'll send it to them.
Normally you'd be able to check the status of your return on the IRS website but it's an over trafficked mess right now that even if you enter all your correct info (SSN, refund amounts submitted, etc.) it will say they don't see you in their software. Tons of our clients have had this issue and its just the nature of COVID's effect on the IRS also. Best of luck to you and at least she's out of your hair now!