Encinitas, CA · Member since 2016 · 8 posts · 2 votes
My wife and I have been using turbo tax to do taxes for the past few years. We both are W-2 earners and house hacked back in 2013 converting a Carlsbad, CA condo into our first rental. The first year of self managing the property has concluded. I started down the path of DYI taxes, but confidence is low to maximize the benefits when taxes are concerned. We are preparing to move into more investments, but need this integral part of the team and 2016 taxes completed. Anyone available or recommendations? Much Gratitude!
Wesley, you'll want to use a CPA who is a real estate investor himself, I think this should be one of the criteria. I would recommend you reach out to @Nathaniel Busch who is the expert in this field.
Wesley, you'll want to use a CPA who is a real estate investor himself, I think this should be one of the criteria. I would recommend you reach out to @Nathaniel Busch who is the expert in this field.
I recommend you contact a couple CPA's and see who you feel you "click" best with. Ultimately you want to be comfortable with the CPA you choose, as this person will be your trusted advisor.
My Tax person is Miles Lawrence (Lawrence Tax Service). He is not a CPA, he is a EA and Esquire. He also is not cheap.
However, our taxes are quite complicated as we pay state income taxes in multiple states, we have a fair amount of rental properties, we have a home business and in the recent past we had two home businesses, and we must pay quarterly taxes based on projected income. So our tax situation requires some expertise.
Miles has been our tax man for quite a few years (maybe 10 years). He does a good job maximizing our write-offs without resulting in an audit.
From my perspective he does a good job ensuring we pay the taxes we are legally required to pay while writing off everything that we can legally write off.
He also does not nickel and dime us. If we have a fairly quick question he provides the answer without any billing. Finally because our tax return is complicated and therefore takes more time than other tax returns, he gives us a discount off his normal rate. I would not expect this unless your like us with a tax return that can take many hours.
So I have been happy with Miles Lawrence as our tax preparer but I do wish his rate was lower (but sometimes you get what you pay for).