H&R Block

Nellie helped me with a tax return problem from 2014 and she rocked it. She did a great job. She followed up with me as the process was not easy. Thanks a bunch.

Nellie sat with me for 30 minutes, punching in numbers, and at the end of the appointment she told me what my return was and how much it would cost to file. I make hardly any money because I’m a full-​time student, so the amounts were almost the same.
I felt really bad for waisting her time, and offered to buy her a coffee (which she somewhat rudely declined to as she already had coffee,) but I ended up leaving and filing with Turbo Tax. I filed for free and got a tax return 7x the amount Nellie estimated.
She didn’t smile once, didn’t tell me her name (just gave me a business card as I left,) and I’m assuming her level of expertise was «beginner» because she kept having to ask for help from another advisor. $xx and $xxxx are 2 COMPLETELY different numbers. I went from losing money to being able to pay for 2 months of rent with my refund.
2 stars because I wasted her time and wasn’t charged for the visit.

I lived overseas for four years and I guess something went awry in my taxes while I was over there. A month after I got back to the US, the IRS just up and seized by bank accounts, which alarmingly had gone to ZERO. Simultaneously, I was getting strange calls from men with South Asian accents claiming to be the IRS and the sheriff’s office, threatening to sue and imprison me if I didn’t pay up right then.
A friend who also lived overseas recommended Scott van Amburg as a guy who seemed to know a lot about international taxpayers (surprisingly not that common among tax preparers). Scott was calm, knowledgeable and slowly told my panicked face the steps I needed to take, and to chill out and ignore the scam callers. In 30 minutes, he reconstructed my old tax return, and sent my much-​relieved ass to the IRS offices (I didn’t even know one could actually visit the IRS) a short walk away.
An hour later, the IRS taken the hold off my accounts and the day was saved! More than anything though, it was Scott’s ability to let me know that stuff was under control that really saved the day.