How do I find best tax preparer for my situation?

March 22, 2018 7:44 AM

My income comes mostly through my single member LLC while wife is employed. I work from home and would like to maximize my deductions. We also had a baby last year. I'd like to find someone who can get us the best refunds, but a Google local search only returned H&R Block which IMO is overpriced for the services they provide.
posted by spacefire to Work & Money (3 answers total)

In our experience, tax software is the best tax preparer. The advice you want can be found in just about any book that gives advice to small business owners. This advice is often less useful for the year just past than the year that has just started, but either way there's not really a professional who is interested in what you did last year. You can get an accountant if you want, or book just one consultation meeting, or find one in your area that does classes or webinars for small business owners, but the software pretty much holds your hand and does its best to maximize your itemizations.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:32 AM on March 22, 2018

My family's situation is very similar. We are using this guy. He's remote to us (Ohio somewhere?) and totally digital, but he's a very proactive communicator. He has asked us to provide documentation to support deductions we had no idea about on his initiative, and offered to file an amended return for a bigger 2016 refund after he noticed our last guy missed some things. He's not cheap relative to Turbotax but he's paid for himself several times over with the additional deductions he spotted. We're very impressed.
posted by caek at 9:00 AM on March 22, 2018

If you want to maximize your deductions, you need to talk to an accountant at the beginning of the year so you can make plans for your special situation and based on the deductions you have as the std deduction is pretty high unless you are very high earner or live in a super expensive home.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:20 AM on March 22, 2018