Planning Strategies, Inc.

Inaccurate 2013 tax submission by owner which lead to us owing $8100. Owner did not communicate with us re: this finding nor offered any guidance.Mr [redacted] owns the business to which I am filing this complaint. He has prepared our tax returns yearly since 2009. In April 2015 we received notification via mail from the IRS, that they reviewed our 2013 tax return which [redacted] had submitted and had found numerous errors in that return. A large sum of income was not reported that year (despite us giving that info to Mr [redacted]) as well as multiple write offs Mr [redacted] had made in excessive amounts to what was legally allowed. Penalties, interest, and taxes on the falsely reported and non-reported money led to a total bill for $8100 which my wife and I now owe the IRS. This is a lot of money for me and my family. This was bad news, and my wife and I were very concerned and confused as to how something like this could have happened with a "professional" tax preparer handling our return.At this point I reached out to Mr [redacted] to find out how this could have happened as well as what the next steps are, as my wife and I have never had a problem with the IRS in the past. I emailed Mr [redacted] the scanned forms the IRS had sent us for him to review on 4/23 in order to offer clarification. He did not respond to the email. I emailed him 4/24 to make sure he had received the scanned forms and make sure there were no errors with that email. He did not respond. Over the next week I called his office almost daily, often multiple times during the day and at different times thinking maybe they were there 1/2 days. I left multiple messages not only on his extension's voicemail but also some of his secretaries. I never received a phone call back. On May 4th I emailed him once again, asking why my phone calls have not been returned and pleading to please let us know what we needed to do, and he responded with an email "I have sent in a response". Literally no other details, no attached document, nothing. After not hearing back from him for days after that email, we became concerned since by law we had to respond to the IRS by 5/20 indicating payment. I sent Mr [redacted] another email 5/11 again pleading to please update us and let us know exactly what we were trying to accomplish (waiving the penalty fees? waiving the interest? etc...). He responded 5/12 asking for any other write off's we have from that year to which I responded we have none, we had already submitted all right offs in 2014 at the time of filing the 2013 return. So again, no response until May 14th (6 days prior to deadline) when he sends another email with this one sentence "sign the forms and figure out a way to pay". At no point through this process did Mr [redacted] ever call me. At no point did he ever offer any detail re: what the situation was, what he would try to do, what we should try to do, etc...When one receives notice that they owe such a large amount of money for something as serious as the IRS, the professional tax preparer owes their client explanation and guidance for what steps need to be taken, as well as why those errors occurred, and try to simply clarify things that everyday people who are not in the finance/tax field do not understand. I no point was I expecting to get out of owing the IRS money which was due, I simply expected good customer service in way of communication and explanations re: the how's, why's, and what's of the incident. Mr [redacted] showed an extreme lack of concern and his failure to communicate with my wife and I led us to feel deserted in an area we had no knowledge in. This large sum of money has changed our finances for the future, we are now not able to put towards retirement until our savings is replenished, our family vacations we had planned are now cancelled and we are now on a strict budget. People need to be aware of the type of service they are at risk of receiving by using Mr [redacted].Desired SettlementExplanation