This time of the year can be a hot bed for tax scammers who pretend to be certified tax preparers. They prepare a tax return, take your money and then are long gone when you receive an IRS notice months or years later. Or even worse, they fraudulenty file on your behalf and take a refund. BE CAREFUL.
Always remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If a tax preparer promises you refunds or big tax savings before even looking at your documents, run, run far away. Do not ever work with someone who tells you how much money they save people. This is about you, not them. Only work with tax preparers who ask to look at your documents before giving you any sort of opinion.
For those of you who are tech savvy, I love the online services of TurboTax and others. These companies spend millions of dollars perfecting their systems. If you just follow the Q&A through the program, you will file a clean and accurate tax return. I recommend these systems for family and friends every day. If however you do prefer to use a human being and want to ask questions and have interesting tax discussions, then please make sure you do your due diligence before hiring your tax professional.
How do you know who is credentialed and legitimate? Well the IRS has help for this. They are well aware of the tax scammers out there and so on the IRS website you will find a directory of valid tax preparers.
And ofcourse I always welcome your questions and will do my best to help. Contact me anytime.