What does a junior accountant do?

What should our accountant be doing for us?

• Unexpected tax assessment came in the mail. What should our accountant be doing for us? So, let me preface this by saying that we made no money last year. Not zero, but a jaw-droppingly low amount. But there were complications in our filing including relocation across state lines and mrs. betachat's change in immigration status from J-1 to permanent residency. So we got an accountant and paid him $850 to file our taxes for us. He dragged his feet so long that he ultimately had to file for an extension, which was sent in on April 15th. I pushed and prodded and he finally got everything sent off in July. In the end, we were feeling pretty good about everything because he'd found a bunch of deductions I'd never have thought to claim and we wound up getting a little money back where we expected to pay. But a lot of this hinged on an apparent judgment call over whether or not mrs. betachat's income while a J-1 from a country with which the US has a tax treaty could be considered taxable once she became a permanent resident. Our accountant claimed, ultimately, the most liberal interpretation of the situation. Now we've received an assessment from our new state of residence that is in excess of $1000. Apparently they interpret things differently. But something seems off here because we only lived in the state for five months of that year, and none of mrs. betachat's income was earned here. So we need him to help us sort this out. But after having sent this new paperwork on to our accountant, I can't get him to reply to my emails and phone calls. We're clearly anchoring the low end of his client list, but we did pay him $850 to file our taxes. This was all done with a chat and a handshake. No contract or anything like that, though I do have a receipt related to the original filing. What can we expect him to do on our behalf now? Is he still obliged to perform work under the expectation that this is related to "filing our taxes for 2009"? Or should we expect that this new work will come with an added fee for services? Does the fact that we incurred late fees on this assessment because he dragged his feet on filing oblige him to rectify our situation in any way? I've never used an accountant before and the referral I got was through colleagues at work. He's a nice guy, just scatterbrained, I think. I want to get this situation cleared up, though, and I'm wondering what I might reasonably be expecting him to do for us.

• Answer:

  Um, wow. First, what your accountant SHOULD do: I had the IRS come down on me for something a year after I'd filed -- they said I hadn't paid self-employment tax on some money that I'd won, which was ludicrous -- and my accountant, whom I'd hired for this very reason, sat down and found the part in the tax code where it said that he was right and I didn't have to pay for it. If he had been wrong, the professional insurance that he pays would have covered it. I might have had to pay more in office fees, but I would have fought that, hard -- it's HIS fault, so why should I have to pay? If he is not responding to your calls, you need to get in touch with his superiors at his firm (if he has one). And if he doesn't, you need to get in touch with his professional licensing board, find a better accountant and have them MAKE him respond to you. You paid him a goodly amount of money -- which I would imagine was on the high side compared to what I paid, though I'm in a different location -- and he has access to some of your most personal information. If he is not treating it with respect, that's a big problem.