I went to H&R Block on the advice of a friend. I my friend how much it cost and she said about $100 an hour. I figured mine would probably be done in less time than that because I already had everything organized and totaled before I went it.
I made an appointment just to have our federal and 2 state taxes done (my husband and I moved in the last year). I never asked for any IRA help. During the meeting my tax preparer was VERY unorganized and was constantly calling for her manager's help. It took much much longer than it needed to, and she kept on saying how I could get more money back if I just opened up a Roth IRA. She pointed to the computer screen and said look, here's $300 you could get back and it won't cost you anything. You just need to open up a Roth IRA for "savers credit" and you can get that $300.in fact, you can just open up a Roth IRA for $300 and it won't cost you then, it evens out.
I don't know much about IRAs and it didn't really make sense to me. But she said I'd just be throwing away that $300 anyway so I might as well open it. I told her I should really think it over since I didn't come here to open an IRA, but she said I can only get the savers credit if I opened it ASAP.
Ok, so I opened the IRA. The whole tax preparation and IRA took an hour and 20 minutes, and no fees were even discussed at the time. I made an appointment for my husband to come back to sign the papers 2 days later.
We came back to sign the papers on a Saturday afternoon. My husband works a lot but he came during his lunch break. After waiting 10 minutes they said they were behind and we should come back in an hour. We went out to eat, then came back. We waited some more. After we went into her office, we couldn't sign the papers right away, because she hadn't printed them out yet. It took a good hour just to get everything printed out and signed. And then I saw what they charged us.
They charged $434 to do our taxes. I thought this was crazy, how could they even justify it? They didn't try, and they said we couldn't have an itemized list of the charges either. And I found that $15 of that was just to open the IRA! I have never heard of any bank or financial institution charging to open an IRA before, and if they're going to charge for it don't they have to tell you before they open it? I was just thinking "damn, I better be getting 20% APR on that IRA". I looked over the "savers credit" we were supposed to have gotten and they listed that as $150 instead of the $300 I thought we were getting back.
So my husband goes to work late and saying to me "god that woman was disorganized, I can't believe you trusted her to do our taxes". So I decide we'll never go back there again.
I got a pamplet on the IRA in the mail a couple days ago. I was considering closing the account since I did need the money and I think it was a huge mistake for me to have opened it. But the fee schedule they sent says I have to pay them $25 just to close the account! They will also charge me $10 a year for keeping the account open! Damned if I do, damned if I don't. And guess how much interest I'm making??? 8%. Yep. 8%. I get better interest than that on my checking account.
I would have been so much happier if H&R Block would have:
1. Given me a fee schedule for my taxes before preparing them.
2. Itemized my tax preparation fee so I can see how they got $434
3. Not pressured me into an IRA by telling me lies about a tax credit for the same amount.
4. Given me a fee schedule and APR report for the IRA BEFORE opening it.
Not only will I never go back to H&R Block, but I will tell everyone I know how they rip you off and try to sell you worthless, money-eating IRAs.
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