Ken Your CPA

I used his services once and he’s a money scamming artist. Does not look for his clients best interest only for his monetary benefit. How he could sleep at night is beyond me.
It is great we have Unilocal to look up local businesses. I just hope people look here first before they use his services.

I’ve used Ken for nearing 15 years for both personal and business returns. He’s gone to bat for me with the IRS, ironed out challenging tax situations and overall performed very well… particularly when I’ve been a number of years past-​due on various items. He’s incredibly knowledgable in the areas of Tax, Finance, Investments, Trusts and overall business structure.
The few negative reviewers should understand that Ken charges by the hour, as do any professionals (you have a lawyer, don’t you?). Ken is very passionate about his work, he’s not someone who will sit on the sidelines and not represent you. If you have a simple 1040, use TurboTax or file your own. If you have complicated work, rely on Ken to perform an excellent job for you.

Ken Rapoport is a scam .His office solicited my business on several occasions for new business. I was in the market so I agreed to meet him. When he came to my office he told me about his business and I explained that I was converting to Quickbooks and needed to have someone do my quarterly filings. When I asked him what he would charge for such filings and balked at giving me a quote. He said that his office would send me a letter of engagement explaining his charges. He asked several times for a retainer. He proceeded to contact my QB person to find out how much I was paying her, professionally inappropriate at best. I called his office on numerous occasions and asked that he returned my calls and my retainer. Only after my check cleared did I hear from him. Ken charged me $ 281.50 for his sales call and $ 110.00 for his secretary to return my phone calls. I went to his office to discuss this face to face and he was nowhere to be found. When I asked his office staff if the had done any work on my files they just looked at each other dumbfounded and said no .Kens email to me he said that there was «extensive» work done already which I found out to be false on visiting his office. When Ken finally returned my call his disposition turned and he proceeded to hang up on me. Totally unprofessional again. Ken is suing 2 general contractors on his 13,000 sq ft home in Northbrook, He spends a lot of time suing his clients, and checking these websites for negative reviews. His company is not recommended by The Better Business Bureau. Beware of this company, there are many negative reviews, I have personally experienced his deceptive practices, and he charges for his secretary to return your phone calls!!.Judging by others who have been scammed, this is his M.O. Will C

Years ago, Ken helped me with some difficulties with the IRS. He patiently worked his way through the issue and was able to reduce the amount owed and have the penalty waived. And Ken’s charge was very reasonable.
Since then, my partner and I have over the last 8 years engaged Ken’s services for our annual taxes. Because of Ken’s extensive tax expertise, we always get a refund much larger than if we had used TurboTax, even allowing for his fee.
Ken is also personable, attentive, and most importantly, honest. I highly recommend Ken!

Completely disorganized. He charged us to find files HE lost in his office.
I had to give the same file more than once which was sitting on his desk.
It is a complete outrage what he charged us. I am condsidering legal action since he was so incopetent, substandard, inferior, and ineffective,

Beware. I ended up paying Ken well over $ 1,000 for nothing. Sure, he claims he did this or that, but I never saw anything he did. No taxes, no work, no other work. I only met with him on two occasions. An initial consultation and then a 2 hour meeting. After that I never met him again until our court date. I think Ken Rapoport is a big scam.
Check out the Cook County Court website. Most CPA’s have sued people zero times. Ken Rapoport has what looks like dozens. Be very careful of CPA scams.

Unprofessional and dishonest.
I hired Ken to do estate taxes. He quoted me between $ 2000 and $ 2500 total the two times I spoke with him on the phone.
I signed an engagement letter and sent him a retainer, hoping for a quick and painless business transaction. What I got, was anything but.
Over the course of our communications, I got no less than 5 spam porn emails from his AOL account, which was annoying. I suppose it’s not really my business what Ken does in his free time, but personally, I wasn’t interested in the penis enlargement that one of Ken’s emails proclaimed would change my life.
He billed me for «communication» charges that added up to over 12 hours worth of time, even though we only sent 23 emails (not including the spam) back and forth, including nearly a dozen that were one-​liners, and another half dozen that were in RE: billing. I asked for a detailed accounting of the time, which he refused to provide. He then attempted to state that they were part of the regular time that he put into doing the taxes, even though I have separate invoices for that service.
When it was all said and done; he wanted over $ 4500 from me, and threatened to take me to court over it if I didn’t pay up. After reading other reviews of Ken’s business; apparently, this is his M.O.
My regular accountant agreed that this was out of the ordinary.
Admittedly, It’s my own fault for not getting his original quote in writing, but I take someone at their word. If they say between $ 2000 and $ 2500, I expect it to be in that range, and if it’s going to be over that amount, they’d better be giving me a call and indicating that BEFORE billing me anything beyond that. In my case, this wasn’t done, and here I am, telling you about my $ 2000+ lesson, which I hope you will learn from.
In the end, I would not rely on him to stick to his word, and would not recommend hiring him.
Reading the other reviews of Ken on Unilocal,I’m not the only one that has had problems with Ken and there are other examples on other sites as well.
I have contacted the CPA board in regards to Mr. Rapoport’s deceptive practices, and I encourage anyone else who has had a problem with him to do the same.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND HIM…
I took an apointment with ken in order to do my personal and business taxes. I asked him in the first meeting how much it will cost me if he provides me the service. He said he has no idea. Then I told him it is important for me to know since I will not be able to pay high fees. Then he said my taxes are cmplicated. (I have two job, one K1, some gains and some interest income, that is all that went on my personal returns. My buiness return had 3 apartment rental income only!!. the returns were so easy to do.) So i told hime give me an idea if what he THINKS. he said it will be around $ 1500 – 2000. And I was like fine.
He then took a $ 500 retainer.
So he takes few days to do my returns and then bills me $ 1700 for the services. So now my total is around $ 2200.00
Then in may he sents me another bill for $ 688.40 for services.
so now my bill is $ 2888.40 for a personal return and a S-​corporation return (gross 30,000 ~ K).
I think he pulls the bills out of no where, just to make money he ruined his relationship with me. I was seriously thinking to give him the accounting services for all my companies. Around six of them. But his billing is so misleading that I changed my mind.
I sent around about four customers and even they complained about his billing.

You Get What You Pay For
I’ve used Ken for my personal and S-​corp taxes. This last year I incorporated, so I needed to file two sets of returns. It was very complicated with many moving parts.
Ken really went to bat for me. I would be hard pressed finding a CPA who would fight harder on my behalf to find all available deductions and legally keep my taxes at a minimum.
No doubt he charged me market rate for his services, but I am willing to pay for quality. If you’re looking for «cheap,» he’s not your guy; if you’re looking for good, give Ken a call.

I would be very careful working with Kenneth Rapoport. I found Ken on Craigslist. Before I met with him he asked that I send over my Quickbooks file so he could take a look. When I met with him he let me know that my books needed a lot of work. I asked him how bad they were and he said that he had clients a lot worse than mine but he could handle cleaning it up. I then asked him to give me an estimate of what it would take to do my taxes. He said that he did not know but it would be an investment due to my books situation. I again asked him to give me an idea and he still could not. How could he not give me an estimate if he had past clients with books worst than mine. WHAT DID HE CHARGE THEM! Within the same meeting he gave me an engagement letter explaining and told me to send some other documents along with a check for $ 300.00 as a retainer. Within the next few days of him receiving my retainer, he sent me a statement of account deducting monies for file set up, emails and downloading my Quickbooks files. I immediately emailed him and said he never gave me an estimate of what my taxes would cost. I did not want to him to do work that I could not afford to pay. The next month he charged me for the emails I sent him regarding billing me and staff time. I had numerous email exchanges with him about billing. He charged me for that too. In the end he charged me $ 880.00 for filing, emails, downloading and the like. He had one solid meeting with me for about 1.5 hours and charged me for 3 hours. He said that he would give me a courtesy discount but I needed to pay him for his time. I did not pay for anything that had to do with my taxes. After numerous emails and insults from Ken, he told me that if I did not pay he would send me to his attorney. DO NOT SIGN and engagment letter with this guy because the last part of it allows him to come after you for payment and you will end up paying his attorney for coming after you. You have no negotiating room if you feels that you did not get what you paid for. I never agreed for him to start working on my books or taxes until I got some sort of estimate and to date he never gave me one just threats of legal action. Faced with him coming after me both as a business and personally, I had to pay $ 880.00 for nothing. MAKE SURE YOU GET AN ESTIMATE OF SOME SORT BEFORE YOU SIGN WITH PEOPLE LIKE KEN OR YOU WILL PAY!!!