NancyJ_redo
07-25-2004, 08:05 PM
With stock purchase plans at work, I understand (thank you Turbo Tax) that the profit from a stock sale can be reported one of two ways - either on the employee's W2 or not. If it's not there, then you have to report it on some type of schedule.
How well known should that be among accountants? I mean, is it considered a really complicated thing that an accountant shouldn't be expected to know, or is it pretty basic?
Here's the background - back in April we filed an extension and paid a good chunk of money with it as estimated taxes owed, all done by me through Turbo Tax. Recently we hired somone to do our taxes and when he called to say they're ready he said we owed about $3K more. I was shocked and questioned him how that could be since I was very generous when I paid back in April since I didn't want to owe a penalty for underpaying. He tried to explain all sorts of reasons why we owed more money but I didn't believe him. I went back and redid all our taxes in Turbo Tax to understand the discrepancy, and it turns out that he separately reported my profits from the Stock Purchase Plan even though it very clearly shows on my W2 that the amount was already included in my W2. And, by double counting that profit, the amount of tax we owed was increased by $3K.
I'm not a tax professional and have very limited knowledge in this area, but if Turbo Tax asks the very simple question up front - 'was the amount included in your W2 already?' - it seems to me this has got to be a fairly basic thing that an accountant should know. And this guy never even raised the question or even suggested that the profit might have already been included in my W2. In any event, I know he and I are going to get into it tomorrow about his fees and I want to understand whether this issue is fairly esoteric or whether it's kind of common knowledge (or should be) among tax professionals. I have a very hard time paying for his services when the tax return was fundamentally wrong. It's one thing if it was a typo or something similar, but this seems like a pretty major issue to me, especially since had I not gone back and completely re-done our taxes with Turbo Tax the RIGHT way, we would have paid $3K more in taxes without ever knowing they weren't really owed.
Thanks so much for reading this far, and thanks for any insight on this!
How well known should that be among accountants? I mean, is it considered a really complicated thing that an accountant shouldn't be expected to know, or is it pretty basic?
Here's the background - back in April we filed an extension and paid a good chunk of money with it as estimated taxes owed, all done by me through Turbo Tax. Recently we hired somone to do our taxes and when he called to say they're ready he said we owed about $3K more. I was shocked and questioned him how that could be since I was very generous when I paid back in April since I didn't want to owe a penalty for underpaying. He tried to explain all sorts of reasons why we owed more money but I didn't believe him. I went back and redid all our taxes in Turbo Tax to understand the discrepancy, and it turns out that he separately reported my profits from the Stock Purchase Plan even though it very clearly shows on my W2 that the amount was already included in my W2. And, by double counting that profit, the amount of tax we owed was increased by $3K.
I'm not a tax professional and have very limited knowledge in this area, but if Turbo Tax asks the very simple question up front - 'was the amount included in your W2 already?' - it seems to me this has got to be a fairly basic thing that an accountant should know. And this guy never even raised the question or even suggested that the profit might have already been included in my W2. In any event, I know he and I are going to get into it tomorrow about his fees and I want to understand whether this issue is fairly esoteric or whether it's kind of common knowledge (or should be) among tax professionals. I have a very hard time paying for his services when the tax return was fundamentally wrong. It's one thing if it was a typo or something similar, but this seems like a pretty major issue to me, especially since had I not gone back and completely re-done our taxes with Turbo Tax the RIGHT way, we would have paid $3K more in taxes without ever knowing they weren't really owed.
Thanks so much for reading this far, and thanks for any insight on this!