negligent accountant

[Matthew Hicks]

Hi everyone,

We hired an accountant at the end of 2014 to do our books, business taxes, and personal taxes.  Our personal taxes have been done for some time and luckily we are owed money.  however our book keeping has still not been completed (we've not yet started 2015 though we do keep good excel records), and our accountant is almost impossible to reach.  he misses meetings >80% of the time and so much time lapses between one phone meeting and the next that we spend most of the time rehashing prior conversations.  This rehashing also makes it clear that he had done no work between calls.  

We are approaching the october deadline for 2014 tax filing and this is started to get extremely concerning.   What legal recourse do i have?  Any suggestions for how to handle this situation.  Without naming the accountant, I can say that I found him on these forums.  The issue isn't competence, it's either being over-worked, overly-distracted, or something else.  We appreciate that personal issues can cause delays in business so we've tried to be as patient and understanding as humanly possible since these delays started back in March. Now we are starting to approach a real deadline and I'm extremely concerned.  

Any advice is appreciated.  

[Mindy Jensen]

I'm glad @Brandon Hall responded. I couldn't remember his name to tag him. (Sorry Brandon...)