Questions to Ask Accounting Professionals
Questions for an individual or small business owner interviewing a CPA, enrolled agent, or bookkeeping firm, covering credentials, fees, who does the work, and what happens when the IRS writes.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What kind of clients do you usually work with?
Why ask it
Most practices cluster around a few situations: W-2 households, rental owners, single-member LLCs, or companies with payroll and inventory. If yours is not one of the clusters they name, you are paying them to learn on your return.
Are you a CPA, an enrolled agent, or an unlicensed preparer?
Why ask it
The credential decides what they can do the day a notice arrives. CPAs and enrolled agents can represent you before the IRS; an unlicensed preparer generally cannot, and will hand you off to someone who can.
Who would actually do my work, and who reviews it before it gets signed?
Why ask it
Small firms often sell the partner and staff the junior. That is fine, as long as you know whose eyes are on the file and whose name goes in the preparer box.
How do you charge: hourly, a flat fee per return, or a monthly retainer?
Why ask it
Hourly billing quietly trains you not to call with questions. Flat fees invite arguments about scope. Neither is wrong, but the structure shapes how often you will actually talk to them.
What would a full year of working together cost me, roughly?
Why ask it
A refusal to estimate is itself informative: the work is unpredictable, or they do not want to be held to a number. A figure delivered instantly, before they have asked anything about you, is worth just as little.
What is included in that, and what counts as extra?
Why ask it
The bill grows in the add-ons: extra states, late K-1s, amended returns, bookkeeping cleanup before the return can even start. Ask them to name the three extras clients like you hit most often.
How do you want me to get my records to you?
Why ask it
Bank feeds, a client portal, a shared folder, or a box of paper: the answer tells you how much data entry lands on your side of the desk and how much of the fee is really for typing.
What do you need from me, and by when, to file without an extension?
Why ask it
You want actual dates. A vague answer here is how March turns into a scramble and a rushed extension, which delays nothing about the payment you still owe.
If you find a mistake in a prior year's return, what do you do?
Why ask it
Prior-year errors are common. The answer separates preparers who will quietly leave it alone from ones who will lay out your options, including the case where amending costs more than the error is worth.
If the IRS or the state sends me a letter, do you handle it, and is that billed separately?
Why ask it
Notice response is often the real reason people hire a professional. Some firms include routine correspondence, some start the clock at the first phone call. Settle it while nothing is wrong.
Do you carry professional liability insurance?
Why ask it
Not every preparer is required to. You want a plain yes and the name of a carrier. Hesitation means the cost of a serious error would sit with you, not them.
Where do you draw the line on aggressive positions?
Why ask it
You are checking whether their line matches yours, since your signature is on the return. Anyone promising a bigger refund than your last preparer before reading a single document is describing risk, not skill.
Looking at my situation, what do you think I am most likely getting wrong?
Why ask it
This invites bluntness early: missed estimated payments, a side business being run as a hobby loss, an unreported foreign account, mileage records that would not survive a look. A shrug means they have not read your material.
What should we be talking about during the year, not just at filing time?
Why ask it
Work done in April mostly records decisions you already made. Their answer shows whether they will call you in September about an equipment purchase or a Roth conversion, or simply process whatever arrives.
What software do you work in, and does that mean I have to change mine?
Why ask it
Some firms will only work inside their own bookkeeping stack, which turns a tax engagement into a migration project. Ask what happens to your existing file and who pays for the conversion.
How do you send and store documents with my Social Security number on them?
Why ask it
Emailed attachments and texted photos of tax documents are still routine at small firms. You want a portal, and you want to know how long files are kept and who else in the office can open them.
During filing season, how fast do you usually reply?
Why ask it
Every preparer is responsive in November. Ask specifically about late March, and ask what happens to your questions when they are three days from a deadline for a bigger client.
Do you work directly with my financial advisor or attorney, or does everything go through me?
Why ask it
If you become the relay between professionals, details get dropped and each one assumes the other handled it. Their comfort with a direct call tells you whether coordination is on your plate.
If you retire or sell the practice, what happens to my records?
Why ask it
Sole practitioners do retire, often with little notice. Ask who inherits the client list and where several years of returns and workpapers physically live.
What makes a client difficult to work with, and why do clients usually leave?
Why ask it
The first half tells you which habits will strain the relationship, usually late documents and arguing about deductions. The second half is where they name their own weak point, generally price or responsiveness.
Choosing and working with an accountant
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the first meeting
Write down what actually happened this year
A single W-2 and a standard deduction is a different job from a partnership with inventory. List your entities, the states you owe in, and the events of the year: a house sale, exercised options, a new rental, a first employee. Fee quotes based on that list mean something.
Bring two prior returns
Two years of returns tell a competent preparer more in ten minutes than an hour of conversation, and they let the preparer show you what the last one missed. If nobody asks to see them, that is a sign in itself.
Ask to read the engagement letter before you commit
It defines scope, fees, what happens on an audit, and who owns the workpapers. Disagreements almost always trace back to something the letter said and nobody read.
Reading their answers
- A fee quoted before they have seen a prior return is a guess wearing a number.
- A promised refund amount, given up front, is a warning rather than a selling point.
- "We handle IRS letters" means nothing until you know whether it is billed by the hour.
- If they cannot say who signs the return, you do not know who is responsible for it.
- A preparer who never asks about next year is selling compliance, not advice.
- Insisting you move to their bookkeeping software is a cost they have not quoted yet.
Once you have hired someone
Send documents in one batch
Trickling in forms across six weeks means the file gets picked up and put down repeatedly, which is how items get missed and hourly bills grow. Wait until you have the full set, then send it once.
Ask before you act, not after
Most of what an accountant can save you depends on the order and timing of decisions. A five minute call before you sell the stock or buy the truck is worth more than any amount of work afterwards.
Keep your own copies
Download the finished return, the supporting schedules, and any correspondence into your own storage each year. Do not assume the portal will still exist, or still be yours, in five years.