moneytalks

It’s tax time and that usually means I put off doing anything tax related until early April. But this my fiance and I wanted to get her taxes done asap because of our new baby born in Jan. 2008, big money back means we wanted to hurry up. Being in a hurry means you go the route that comes the easiest and H&R Block comes to mind when you think of fast and easy. We had no intention of paying for them to rapid refund our money or give any stupid card that charges you fees for every action you take but we wanted a quick electronic file.

We went ahead and made an appointment at a local office and headed in anxious to hear how much money we’d be getting back. (I estimated right around 4K) My fiances taxes are pretty simple. She had a W-2 from a place she worked for half last year and a 1099 Misc from the same place because a large portion went towards her student loans but counted as income. She also had some income from some freelance work she did that came in just over the $600 minimum for what you have to report. She received no records for this income, she got paid through Paypal and we just knew from that how much they paid her.

So it is quite obvious that the lady doing her taxes is an idiot. She kept clicking in and out of screens for no reason, took forever to find a code for the freelance work she did and kept mousing over the entire screen aimlessly in an attempt to buy time to figure out what to do next. It took her over an hour to complete something that could have been done in less than a half an hour.

The time finally came that she told us we were getting $3,200 back, a bit less than what I figured it would be but not bad none the less. The waitress/tax preparer than tells us that we have the honor of paying them… wait for it…. FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY TWO DOLLARS!!! Me and my fiance looked at each other in shock. When we expressed our anger and shock she told us, with a straight face, that we could save some money off our bill. Here it comes, I knew it must have been a mistake. That money must have been with all sorts of extras added in, as we reject the extras we’ll get our bill down around a hundred or so. Than she lays on the news that we could save a whopping $17 by doing our city taxes ourselves. So this moron actually thought that a savings of 17 bucks bringing the total down to $405 would make us change our minds? We got kind of loud calling them thieves and letting them know that I will inform as many people as possible how bad they are. We were told that those were our opinions and to keep them to ourselves. (checking around the internet those are more than just our opinions, they seem to be the “opinions” of quite a few people)

We walked out and I did her taxes online with TurboTax for $50, not to mention we got an extra $200 back then what we would have gotten from H&R Block. They take advantage of the poor who can’t wait for tax returns and are willing to pay anything. Paying $400 in fees isn’t a big deal to a desperate person who will be getting 3 or 4 grand back and those crooks know this. I urge everyone to boycott this place, they are no better than those check cashing/payday loan places.