<p>It’s frustrating working with the new CPA. He’s busy with his long-time clients and is giving us very little time or effort. We are grateful he’s willing to work with us, but it is an adjustment for him and for us.</p>
<p>We have been told he’s prepared the extension papers but he advises us to pre-pay “whatever we think,” so we don’t end up paying a penalty in case we have underwithheld. In prior years, our late CPA (the one who died earlier this month), would run numbers to come up with a decent guestimate of what we should pre-pay and we have NEVER had any penalties or problems.</p>
<p>This year is complicated as SIL who had a partnership with H died in the end of the 1st quarter, we’re still trying to figure out a FAIR appraisal, and we had some RMDs from her, as she was over 70.5 when she died & left IRAs to H & BIL.</p>
<p>The CPA has left us to write a check WE feel is appropriate. In prior years, we rarely had to make any pre-payment as H generally gets a refund check, but both IRS and HI appear to be charging penalties and interest if there is any tax due and unpaid by original due date.</p>
<p>When I ran calculators at tax-rates.org with the best guesses of $$$s I could come up with, I got a range of a credit to under $1K in taxes for HI taxes and under $6K-nearly $10K for IRS. I was thinking of perhaps padding it by $2K-3K and writing checks for those amounts. Any other suggestions?</p>
<p>We have used the prior CPA for decades and this tax stuff is causing stress around our home. Thanks for any insights.</p>
<p>I think your plan is good, and I wouldn’t worry too much about it, don’t know if I would bother to pad it either. If you send them too much, you get a refund, not enough, some penalty. We sent them an extra 25K last year at tax time with the extension, and had to pay another 10K or so in October. Will do the same this year, and I’m sure there will be more due in October. But the interest you pay on the extra owed is not that much (I think it’s around 4%/annual rate), and the penalties don’t end up to be that great, just for delaying a bit. Plus you don’t pay penalties sometimes for underpaying.</p>
<p>Sounds like your CPA just doesn’t want to do the work, but you can make a rough guess. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, as it doesn’t seem like it will be that much of a hit anyways.</p>
<p>Thanks. H is the most upset. He was very used to the old CPA and really doesn’t like change. I thought his old CPA made me bonkers, he & H would find EVERY PENNY, which is why they always worked so hard and long on everything. At some point, I am hoping to take over the books or have H do so, or perhaps we’ll find a CPA we both like better than this new one. So far, have not been impressed by what I’ve heard of others’ CPAs, but will keep looking.</p>
<p>The CPA didn’t even tell me about the tax estimator, I found it on-line to give me some peace of mind. I plugged in the range of income I think we might end up with (with partnership and rentals, and depreciation, etc., it gets a bit messy). Oh well, thanks for weighing in.</p>
<p>Can you put your tax information into tax software to get a reasonable estimate, even if you are not confident enough in using the tax software to produce the final return?</p>
<p>(Plus, you can then compare what the tax software produced with what the CPA produces later – for any differences, you may want to find out why there are differences, as these are more likely places where you and/or the CPA made some error.)</p>
<p>It sounds like his old CPA was really dedicated, hard to find someone who cares about your money as much as you do! I can’t imagine you’ll ever find someone else like that. And it sounds really complicated…you have my sympathy. Honestly though, after reading that the same return given to IRS professionals will come out with ten different results…it seems all you can do is try to do things by the rules, and if you’re wrong, oh well. Chances are, you might not even be wrong in your own favor!</p>
<p>It could be worse. We moved from NJ to NC and after a couple of years I got notices from the IRS wanting more money due to an error in my returns from years ago that were prepared by the NJ guy. He wouldn’t return my phone calls so I just paid up.</p>
<p>I just used the free estimator. Looks like I may have to run it with higher numbers as there weren’t as many repairs done in 2012 as prior years, so the net profits from the rentals may be higher, especially if divided by 2 instead of 3. My BIL has a MUCH more complicated situation, since he & SIL were running a dental practice together.</p>
<p>That would be upsetting having the NJ preparer ignoring the phone calls. Our CPA would argue on our behalf if we got any notices and was able to get them to waive penalty and interest once because he thought had HAD filed an extension but had only done it for one of our two returns. He was a really nice guy. The new CPA is in his 80s and only helping us as a favor to dad. Oh well, he has an entire firm working under him, so hopefully we will get it all squared away during the extension period.</p>
<p>Your old CPA died, and your new one is in his 80’s??? I’m just thinking that if your husband doesn’t like change, it might make more sense to find someone a bit younger . . . just saying.</p>
<p>Agree–we are looking for someone else, but are glad to at least have this guy and his firm for this year while we shop. Finding a good CPA is a challenge.</p>
<p>My husband is a CPA. He routinely files extensions for clients but he would never leave up to the client to figure out the estimated tax bill. </p>
<p>I realize he took you on as a last minute favor but I would tell him you need some help with this. That’s why you hire a CPA. My husband is frantically busy this time of year but he will file an extension for people who wait even up to April 14th to get him their stuff. It’s not that complicated for an experienced tax preparer to do a quick estimation.</p>
<p>Thanks. H and I think we may go elsewhere for our CPA, maybe the guy our late CPA recommended. Was very disappointed in this one so far. I’m pretty confident I calculated our estimated taxes pretty well and are prepaying enough.</p>