How much does your accountant charge for taxes?

[Anonymous]

We paid $350

[Anonymous]

PPs earning 250k+ you are lucky (probably white). But not very sharp. You are collecting all the paperwork, spending time on answering questions, having some contact, then posting here because you can’t afford an extra few hundred bucks on a $650k salary. My 12 yr old can do our taxes. $350k, many many stock transactions, K1s, 529, charity, IRA. Turbo tax is meant for people with a high school level understanding of the English language. Tsk.

[Anonymous]

We pay about $1,300, but that’s a discounted/courtesy rate because DH owns a business and the CPA also does all accounting and taxes for the business (for a separate fee).

[Anonymous]

$6500 but we are very high income with very complicated returns.

[Anonymous]

$400. We own 4 properties. Been with our accountant 15 years.

[Anonymous]

OP, you sound rich, lazy, and stupid. Your accountant should bilk you for every cent they can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We just paid 1300. I used to pay $700.

I'd like a benchmark to know if this is typical.

Here are the specifics in terms of complexity for taxes

Gross salary 650k
Roughly 70k in deductions
Some mutual fund dividends (not a lot- not complicated)
Some stock (not a lot- not complicated)
IRAs and dependent care taxes


Is this normal or out of whack?

We have similar stats. An accountant here charged us around 1,300, but we pay someone in a lower cola area about 700 who was introduced to us by family in that area.

[Anonymous]

Our stats are similar to yours and our Bethesda tax accountant charges $800.00 and that includes a mid year review to see if we need to modify our quarterly payment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We just paid 1300. I used to pay $700.

I'd like a benchmark to know if this is typical.

Here are the specifics in terms of complexity for taxes

Gross salary 650k
Roughly 70k in deductions
Some mutual fund dividends (not a lot- not complicated)
Some stock (not a lot- not complicated)
IRAs and dependent care taxes


Is this normal or out of whack?

You can do that with TurboTax.

$80 at most.

This is OP- I realize it would be very cheap to do myself. However, don't have the time or patience to do turbo tax type solution. I also don't trust myself to be able to quality check the results of a software program. I am willing to pay somebody or the convenience of not doing myself (and so they can be accountable for the final result), but I want to pay a reasonable rate. So Turbo Tax is not an option...Really just hoping to know whether my CPA is charging me fairly or just looking at my income and determining a rate that is some % of my income.

Isn't it *more* time consuming to meet with an accountant?

How can you not trust yourself to check software output but do trust yourself to check accountant output?

We don't meet with the accountant. we put all our paperwork in a file and drop it off. We answer a simple questionnaire. It's all done by email. No phone conversations. We don't 'check' the output. i mean we look it over to make sure things we know about show up in line items (i.e. IRA, child care etc). And if the payment is significant we'll do a more thorough look at line items. But its not like I am spending hours checking the thick packet that comes back and recalculating each line myself. As a professional I trust that the CPA has done their job...I'm not even sure what I would look for.

Then why would you check the tax software?

Also, it may be faster to go through TurboTax than even driving to the accountant. It took me 20 minutes this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PPs earning 250k+ you are lucky (probably white). But not very sharp. You are collecting all the paperwork, spending time on answering questions, having some contact, then posting here because you can’t afford an extra few hundred bucks on a $650k salary. My 12 yr old can do our taxes. $350k, many many stock transactions, K1s, 529, charity, IRA. Turbo tax is meant for people with a high school level understanding of the English language. Tsk.

Good for you- you earn a gold star.

Now get off this thread unless you have something helpful to share based on the question asked about CPA rates.

Feel free to also start your own thread about Turbo Tax and its benefits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PPs earning 250k+ you are lucky (probably white). But not very sharp. You are collecting all the paperwork, spending time on answering questions, having some contact, then posting here because you can’t afford an extra few hundred bucks on a $650k salary. My 12 yr old can do our taxes. $350k, many many stock transactions, K1s, 529, charity, IRA. Turbo tax is meant for people with a high school level understanding of the English language. Tsk.

Good for you- you earn a gold star.

Now get off this thread unless you have something helpful to share based on the question asked about CPA rates.

Feel free to also start your own thread about Turbo Tax and its benefits.

PP earns a gold star for racism too.

[Anonymous]

We paid $1250 last year and $1050 the year before that. We had been with the same accountants for ten years and the price kept going up while they were getting less and less helpful. Years back we were filing in multiple jurisdictions due to partnership and it was more like $700. Then a firm in Virginia bought them and the guys we had been dealing with left so we have a new accountant starting this tax season. High income, one self-employed, three investment properties.

[Anonymous]

Are all of you PP's in DC?

I find the low amounts posted to be shockingly low.

I pay around $1,400, it's not very complicated and I will not use Turbo Tax ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$3500. Ours are a little complicated.

What is a 'little complicated' mean?

I'd like to know what makes taxes harder/longer to do for CPA?

I feel like my CPA just taks on an extra 20-30% YOY when he sees our salary went up. I don't get it.

K-1s, foreign income, bunch of attachments. Our filing is usually about 3 inches thick with the bulk of it hand prepared attachments.

+1. And that is just for our joint return. Plus we have a trust return and an LLC return. This year we also had to do a gift tax return and one of our minor kids required a tax return. I did my Mom’s taxes on Turbo Tac but the accountant did the other five returns.

[Anonymous]

$625 $400k hhi Dual state.