the Cost of Personal Accounting Services

I used an accounting firm to prepare my taxes. The firm provided a tax organizer in November so that I could begin preparing. They took all the information and prepared the return in a short amount of time. They offer a full range of accounting services but this was the only service that I used.

The preparation was very thorough, although I did most of the work in organizing the documents and completing the questionairre. The firm was very professional and they have a great reputation. I won't use them again because I felt that their fee was excessive considering that I only filed a short form and it is basically a fill in the blank in a software program. I would use them for detailed business returns because they are very thorough and I don't think they would overlook too many deductions. In my case I could have done my own taxes for probably $29.00 through an on-line tax preparer.

Find out the cost in advance. If they can't give that then look elsewhere. I would have saved a lot of money and been able to get the same refund by doing my taxes myself. Shop prices unless you have a complicated return, then you should be willing to go with the more talented firms.