accounting fees

I know i am going to offend the accountants in here , but i have had it with mine. Now I am talking about an incorporated company , however i supply all the info from simply accounting with all my investment gains/loss , dividends, income, interest accounted for, income and balance sheets and got charged a whopping $5000. So i bought a tax software program $225 and looking at what they did last year it took me about 10 hours ( being generous and auditing my figures incase i have to defend, which they take no risk for when they did it) to file my corporate income taxes. So at 5000/10= 500 per hour and they have a 30/hr tops numbers girl filling it out , I'm going to rant...... I have to admit though I am handy with numbers and anal about where all the $ goes......but I can do this. It was last year when the accountant said I was going to have to spend some money to figure out what to do with my family trust when it irked me. And yes ,I just filed my trust tax return in about an hour.

Not sure how it is in your region but the CPA field of graduates, especially in the public arena, is shrinking. That coupled with new regulations pushing the policing burden from the IRS onto accountants is consuming time spent by upper level preparers. Preparers are likely to try to control workflow/headache through billing. This is even more evident if your accountant is older and trying to dwindle his workload.

I've witnessed the older accountant's around here dwindling their practice by literally doubling their fees over prior year .... If you can double your fees and only loose half your clients ... that's a solid start to retirement.

I'd offer help but it's all Canadian and stuff. Yuck :)

We pay auditors a rate of $400-$500 per hour. Not unusual for a mid/large corporation. But yes that that seem unreasonable, without knowing the complexities of your tax return.

I am an accountant but work for a manufacturing company. I don't do taxes thankfully!

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Originally Posted by KG's Supra24

Not sure how it is in your region but the CPA field of graduates, especially in the public arena, is shrinking. That coupled with new regulations pushing the policing burden from the IRS onto accountants is consuming time spent by upper level preparers. Preparers are likely to try to control workflow/headache through billing. This is even more evident if your accountant is older and trying to dwindle his workload.

I've witnessed the older accountant's around here dwindling their practice by literally doubling their fees over prior year .... If you can double your fees and only loose half your clients ... that's a solid start to retirement.

I'd offer help but it's all Canadian and stuff. Yuck :)

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hit the nail on the head,

most big firms with CPA are looking for large corp returns with big $$$, that why tax prep is being done online and through tax preparers with very little or just basic training Jackson Hewitt , block, turbo tax etc.