H&R Block

I had a complicated tax review as I had moved from another state, and my wife had worked for only a part of the year. We were assigned to Ms Abboud because of her experience. I had previously had my tax returns done with H&R block for 3 years, and hence, expected she would see all the returns in their system. She was quite inefficient, did not really advise us much ways to save on tax, and moreover, was not on top of things. We had to go to her again a few days before the deadline because we realized she had not filed our city tax in our previous state, which H&R block had done for 3 consecutive years before! It should have been obvious. I will be looking for a new tax representative this year.

I had a frustrating experience yesterday at a branch here in St. Louis, and here’s the message I sent to H&R Block about it on their facebook page.
«As others have already said, I’m posting here some feedback since there’s no customer service phone number on your website. I had a frustrating experience at one of your locations here in St. Louis: 3655 PAGE BLVD
SAINT LOUIS, MO 63 113 (BTW, I usually go to TurboTax to tackle my tax needs, but decided to give H&R Block a try.)
I’m new to the state and don’t have any state or federal taxes withheld from my income (I have a stipend from my university and it is not to pay for school, I have a fee waiver for that). So, I need to make estimated quarterly payments and went to this office to get help with that. The lady, Kathy Smith, was very nice but highly incompetent in this matter. She didn’t know anything about what she was doing, and that’s fine, it seems like my situation is a rare one. She kept getting help from the manager, and all I wanted was to genuinely know what taxes I need to pay so I don’t end up with a huge amount at the end of the year. Finally, she came up with a number, which was more than half of my yearly income. Obviously it was wrong since no one pays more than half of his/​her income in taxes, so she was like „OK I don’t know what’s wrong so let’s go back and change some numbers.“ Btw, she admitted she didn’t know what she was doing. She wanted to charge me $ 75 for 4 hours, but I had called the day before and the person who picked up the phone gave me a different price: $ 30. I told her this, but I ended up getting charged $ 45.
Anyways, at this point it was obvious that I would fare better just downloading the forms myself from the IRS website and doing the numbers myself (which is what I ended up doing). So I just wanted to finish doing what we were doing, pay, and get out of there. She finally came up with a different amount that I needed to pay in taxes and she gave me the 8 vouchers to send in the mail: 4 for the state of MO and 4 for the federal IRS. That’s it. Just the vouchers. I’m like „can I have the rest of the sheets that have all the numbers? My income, my wife’s income, etc.“ She didn’t want to give them to me and was very adamant about this, saying that they had her employee number and had to shred them. So when the manager came by (I didn’t catch her name) I told her „we were wondering if you could help us. I want the sheets with the income numbers and all that for my own records“ and she also didn’t want to give them to me. I’m like, „well I’d like to keep a record of everything and I forgot what number we put in for my wife’s withholdings so far.“ So she manager’s like „it was $ 650, I remember.“ And still didn’t want to give me those sheets! I insisted, and after a while they game me one incomplete sheet with some numbers.
Anyways, it was a very frustrating experience. I came home, did the calculations myself, and came up with very different tax estimates. Needless to say, I’m going to follow my own calculations since I feel more confident that they’re more accurate than what Kathy, who admitted didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t want to give me what I paid for, came up with at H&R Block. It’s frustrating, because I paid $ 45, and I feel like it was for nothing. I’d like something to be done about this by H&R Block. Thanks.»

I had a wonderful tax professional, Tracie Gregory Goffe, help me prepare my 2011 taxes. I was in and out within an hour and she was so incredibly helpful. I felt like I was in good hands with her, that she was incredibly knowledgeable and attentive to my questions and concerns. We made great conversation and I hope to have the opportunity to work with her again. Thanks, Tracie!