The amount is real and so is the feeling that it came back bigger than it should be, with nobody ever sitting down to explain how it got there.
Hating the bill is a reasonable response to a year nobody managed. The figure you signed was arithmetic run after the fact on decisions you had already made, and most of those decisions came and went without anybody flagging which ones would move the number. Send last year's return ahead of the call and Steven Palmieri reads it before you talk. Twenty minutes later you know what that return says about how the year was handled, what planning would have changed while the year was still open, and what is left to work with between now and December. You also hear what the monthly work costs with the tax plan inside it. A tax plan on its own carries a $15,000 price at plenty of firms, and here it comes with the work, because a plan only pays off if somebody keeps acting on it. No charge for the call and nothing to sign at the end of it.
A bad tax person never shows up as a line item on an invoice. The cost arrives later, as a larger number next April or as a letter you have to answer by yourself. Twenty minutes on last year's return is usually enough to tell which one you are heading for.
A return prepared from the folder you dropped off is a transcription of a year that has already ended. Nobody asked you a question in June, nobody called in October, and the person who filed it has no reason to think about your file again until you turn up next spring with another folder.
Somebody quotes $15,000, walks you through a deck, and hands you a document you are expected to carry out on your own. Whatever you never got around to is usually the part that would have moved the number, and nobody was keeping track of which part that was.
A return put together quickly by someone who never asked you anything is the kind that draws a notice, and the notice is addressed to you. Nobody can promise the IRS stays quiet. What twenty minutes can tell you is whether your numbers trace back to books that would hold up, and whether you would be reading that letter alone.
Nobody honest answers that before reading your return. What is true is that most of a bill is decided during the year, by choices about entity, payroll, timing and what actually gets recorded, and those choices are rarely the ones people guess at. Twenty minutes on last year's return tells you which of them were left on autopilot and which are still live for this year. If it turns out your year was handled well and there is little left to move, you get told that too.
We do, and the return is prepared in house rather than passed to a seasonal preparer who will never see your file again. Steven Palmieri reviews it before it is signed and sent, and the same team is still reachable in September when there is something to act on.
Part of it, yes. A closed year is finished, and what we find in last year's return becomes information rather than a refund. The stretch between today and the last day of December is the part still open, and that is where entity choice, payroll setup, timing and retirement decisions still have room to move. April is where you find out what happened. Autumn is where you decide what happens. That is the reason to spend twenty minutes now instead of after the next filing.
You send last year's return ahead of time, plus read-only access to the books if you have it, and Steven Palmieri reads both before you talk. In the twenty minutes you get what the return shows about how the year was run, what planning would have changed, whether the books are solid enough to plan from at all, and a list of what is still open before December. Then you hear the monthly number with the tax plan inside it. No charge and nothing to sign.
No, and most people on these calls are current on everything. We do not take collection or debt cases and we do not represent anyone in an audit or an appeal. This is for an owner writing large checks every quarter who has never had anybody plan the year that produces them. If that does not describe you, twenty minutes makes it clear quickly and costs you nothing.