Frank E Sterbin CPA

Review: [redacted] is a public accountant. I went to him for an estimate on my businesses taxes. After he reviewed all of the documents I had for him; he gave me an estimate of "a couple hundred dollars" and told me he would have it done in a week's time. I agreed and told him if I liked his work I would be returning customer. After five weeks and my constant weekly reminder to him that I needed my taxes to be done, he finally finished them four weeks after he had originally promised. After receiving my taxes, I asked the secretary if I could pay the bill right there on the spot. The secretary told me that they would send the bill by mail. After four months of waiting and not returning to Frank Sterbin as a customer, the bill arrived. He had told me it would be a couple hundred dollars when I agreed to let him do my taxes, however the bill stated that I owed him an outrages $1387.00. I went to Frank Sterbin and asked him why he billed me $1387.00 when we had agreed upon a few hundred. He told me that he had to work more than he had originally thought, however he had never once told me that the price would go up. Then in an unbelievably arrogant manner, he told me, "This is the bill. If you pay me $1200 cash today, then we are done." I told him that this was way to much money, considering the amount we had agreed upon. Then he, again in the most arrogant manner I have ever seen, kicked me out. Being an honest man, I sent him a check of $600 for doing my taxes, which is three times the amount we had agreed upon. Even after that, he is demanding I pay the rest of this unfair bill and is charging me interest on it at random times. We got the bill for the remaining amount on November 7 and were charged interest on January 4, February 11, and May 3rd. It is completely unfair to tell someone that it will cost a certain price and then charge them a completely different price after the work is done. Frank E. Sterbin is an unethical accountant and cannot be allowed to continue this malpractice.Desired Settlement: Seeing as I have already paid triple of what was negotiated, I would like the remaining balance to be eliminated and if possible a refund of the amount I have already over-paid.

Business

Response:

Pursuant to our telephone conversation

last week please consider this an answer and objection to the above complaint.

The complainant, [redacted], came

in my office in January 2012 and asked for a quote to prepare a corporate

income tax return. I told him our fee

for preparing a Federal and State corporate income tax return was $375 as long

as the underlying information was accurate and complete. I explained to him the

required information to complete a corporate return was a beginning balance

sheet, a reconciled ending balance sheet and a list of income and expenses.

I further explained to him that we

would send a bill based on time if we had to do any further work to satisfy the

Internal Revenue Service’s due diligence requirement for a tax preparer.

The complaint brought in the 2010 tax

return with an incorrect and incomplete beginning balance sheet and the current

year information he provided us was incorrect and incomplete. I met with him

and explained that the information he gave to us was wrong. The errors

included, among other things, checking account balances, missing fixed asset

costs, depreciation and the current year listing of income and expenses were

incomplete. I told him there would be additional time and expense incurred in

order for us to prepare accurate tax return. He instructed me to go ahead and

complete the return and also, to prepare the required form 1099s for the

Internal Revenue Service. I had an additional meeting with him to discuss the

differences between an independent contractor and an employee. I indicated to him that it was my opinion

that Internal Revenue Service and the State of Wisconsin would classify the

people that work for him as employees and he would be liable for Social

Security and unemployment taxes.

We have significantly more time

invested than what we billed and the remainder the time I wrote off as client

development. Subsequent to the billing he came in and accused me of

overcharging in spite of showing him the extra time and work it took us to

complete an accurate return.

Based on the above facts I believe that

this can claim is unjustified and without merit.

If you have any further questions feel

free to contact me.

Very truly yours,