I hired a chartered accountant three weeks ago to help me with my taxes due to a 1031 exchange. The taxes were supposed to be done three weeks ago. I had to point out to him that the settlement statements would be needed by him too since they are used in the basis calculation. He has changed his story three times on how the 1031 exchange basis is calculated (I have this in email, I'm not mis-remembering...). 

When I started to lose faith in his competence and ability to complete in time, I started doing it myself again like I usually do on one of the online tax software sites. So far his return has come back with a 3K refund (I usually get 10K) while mine has come back with an 11K refund. 

I'm torn on whether I should go with his that is nearing completion (95% done, just doing the 1031 portion now) or mine (100% done, ready to submit and all alerts in the software (only had one alert) have been addressed.

Also, should I still pay him $700 if I don't use his return??

At the end of the day I MAY get audited but I reported all of my income so even if I miscalculated the worst case scenario as I understand it is that they would catch an error in my calculations and I'd owe back taxes plus interest/penalties, etc. At least that's the way I understand it.