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Review 9/9/2011
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As another reviewer wrote, if I could give zero stars I would. Keith West did our taxes for 5 years without issue. However all that changed for our 2009 returns. When my husband left his Westtax app't in 2/2009, Keith had been paid, but asked to keep our taxes for an extra few days because the amount we owed was so high. He wanted to look it over again. February and March came and went, no tax returns and no response to our many phone calls. Same thing for the first 13 days of April, the secretary told us not to worry, if we didn't have them by the 15th, Keith would file for an extension. Our 2009 taxes were overnighted to us and received on the morning of April 15, 2010. As promised our amount owed to the IRS was greatly reduced. Fast forward to August 2011, we received a notice from the IRS that a $10,002 error had been made in our reported withholding for 2009, and we would be receiving a bill that included interest and penalties. As we had always paid extra for Keith's "insurance", I immediately emailed the letter to Keith and called the office. Between 8/05/11 and 8/31/11, we contacted Keith West's office by phone and email repeatedly . Keith was never available. On 8/17/2011, we were contacted by Art, from Westtax after I begged the secretary to let me talk to someone. Per Art, there did appear to be a clerical error on line 61. Art suggested that the first step we needed to take was to contact payroll and have them do an audit of all withholding to be sure their figure was correct. Art then said any further action had to be done by Mr. West. On August 24th, my husband was able to speak to Mr. West on his second try. Mr. West told him he was going to the IRS office to review their files and would call him back by 4:00pm on August 26th. If he did not call him back, Bruce was to call him at 4:00 on August 30th. On 8/24/2011, we received a bill from the IRS for $11, 382.54, due by 9/12/2011. We emailed a copy of that bill to Keith. We did not receive the promised call on 8/26/11. On 8/29/11, we called his office. We were told he was out of the office on the 29th and 30th dealing with the State and Feds. We did receive a phone call from our payroll and they did audit the withholding and the original W-2 was correct. At 4:00 on 8/30/2011, we called Mr. West as per instructed. He was not in. On 8/31/2011, we contacted the office. He was not in, but Mr. West would be in the office later in the afternoon. We started calling at 3: 45 pm and placed 5 phone calls and only got the answering machine even though the message said the office hours were M-Th 10-5. Screening their calls? That left us with 11 days to resolve this issue, obtain some kind of funding and make the payment, as it appears a clerical error was made. We needed him to advise us. We never heard from him & his office quit taking our calls. On 9/06/11, we had to pay another tax professional to review our 2009 tax return for errors and to advise us regarding payment. There was a data entry error made on the withholding amount for 2009. We owe the IRS $11, 382.54. I do not dispute the amount, I do not blame Keith for making an error. I do blame Keith for never taking or returning our phone calls. All we wanted was courtesy and professionalism and a little advice before paying. I have reported Mr. West to the BBB and am about to report him to the IRS, as he is an Enrolled Agent".
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