Pesta & Pesta Tax Preparation

Extremely disappointed and unsatisfied with Pesta & Pesta. Everything seemed good at first, when we made initial contact with Alec, but it all went downhill when we started to work with the accountant assigned to us, Jim. The lack of communication and mistakes made were unacceptable. Prior to our appointment, we uploaded our previous year's return and all our supporting documentation. I also requested that last year's taxes be reviewed first. When we arrived, however, it became abundantly clear that Jim hadn't even glanced at our taxes. He spent *two hours* on hunt-and-peck data entry, made simple mistakes like getting my husband's birth date wrong not once, but twice, and didn't know the answer to questions like, "Is out-of-state rental income taxed by California state?" Jim wanted us to file our taxes right then and there, but I needed to go home and get my routing and account numbers from my checkbook. Then I glanced at the not-yet-filed return, and discovered he had failed to calculate or include depreciation on our rental property, despite this clearly being part of our 2018 taxes. This was a big reason I wanted the 2018 tax return reviewed as well. The cherry on top? Whenever I asked a question, I was either ignored or received a vague reply. My husband, on the other hand, got prompt responses to his questions. I was even left off of one of the email threads. I'm the breadwinner in our family and have done our taxes for years in the past, so this was unacceptable. We're going with another accountant for our taxes this year, since I don't trust them to listen to me or prevent even more mistakes. I would stay far, far away from Pesta & Pesta, particularly if you're a woman and don't want to just be brushed off.
Dec 25th, 2019

Feb 27th, 2017