I had a very happy client come visit me this week. She had hired another tax preparer to do her taxes. However, she did not receive her refund. She had claimed an Earned Income Tax Credit and the Internal Revenue Service challenged it. She went to see her tax preparer, but he closes right after the end of the tax season. Finally, she received a demand from the Internal Revenue Service, because not only were they not giving her a refund, but they determined that she owed them money. That inspired her to come and see me.
Fortunately, we were able to work together and come up with the documentation to prove that she was entitled to the earned income credit. I fired off a letter to the Internal Revenue Service with the documentation and she received her refund check. She came in this week to let us know that she had gotten it and to thank us. While I am happy that she got her refund and am certainly happy that I have a happy client. On some level I am saddened. Not only did she have to pay her tax preparer to do her return, but on top of that she had to pay me considerably more as a tax attorney fixing a problem, than she would have had to pay me to prepare the return correctly and document it correctly in the first place. Had she hired me to do her return in the first place, she would have saved herself a significant amount of money in fees and she would have gotten her tax refund months ago.