I was highly disappointed with our appointment.
We sat down and I provided my paperwork which was a lot. We had donation receipts, other income, W2s, student loans, etc. I also had a list of bank statements that were itemized for other write offs. We spent a lot of money last year and also bought a home so I was anticipating to itemize some deductions.
The employee put in our documents in about 10-15 min. I think she asked me 5 times if I had any cash donations, which I did not. She never asked me about any other deductions. She then said we owed around $5000.00 for taxes. I have never paid this much in my life and considering we had bought a home I was not expecting this.
I advised this was not acceptable and she had her manager come over and review what she had put in her system. The manager found one other small tax deduction for the home in the amount of about $200 and said everything was good to submit. I advised I would need to go through my documents and figure out if we had any other deductions because the amount was completely unreasonable. So, we left.
I went home and that night, I went through Turbo Tax and sure enough found a TON of other deductions that were never even asked. These were deductions which were substantiated with receipts. So, I decided I would give The employee a chance to fix the return and called the next day. I was told The employee was with a client and that she would call me back. Did I ever get a call back. NO. I did not.
I ended up taking all my information and deductions I found to Jackson Hewitt and They helped me file my return. It took around 4 hours, YES.. .we have a lot tax items. I would never expect it to take 15 minutes. She got the money we owed down to $900.