I am in a panic - HELP - kind of a legal question

[DaveO]

Sounds like your would be client is a crackpot. I don’t get too concerned about the lawyer threat. I was the CFO for a small publishing company that was always threatened with legal action. We spent plenty of money on attorneys but rarely saw the inside of a court room. I had a couple whom I had filed for several years. The husband ran a Schedule “C” business and kept terrible records. Every return was a battle to get the information together and on the return. He was always blaming her for not keeping adequate records of his business even though she worked a full time job and ran after the 3 kids. After 3 years of not filing she had enough and came in and filed with her W-2 as MFS and collected three years of refunds. He was livid and demanded copies of her returns which I refused to provide. Next came the tautly worded letter from his attorney demanding same. I replied with a copy of our third party disclosure agreement and advised the attorney that perhaps she wasn’t aware of recent taxpayer disclosure authorization requirements and that I’d be happy to provide whatever was requested once I had a copy of our agreement in hand with her notarized signature. Funny how the “painful, expensive and messy” legal actions promised by the attorney never came to pass.

[MAJ]

Make it go away!

Give them a paper copy of the return.
However, when printing be sure to put a large wartermark on it that says
"PRELIMINARY COPY ONLY - NOT FOR FILING".

"INCOMPLETE"

or something to that effect. As for lawyer, ask for the phone number. Guarantte that shuts them up! Remove your name form the return or put UNPAID PREPARER in the paid preparers box since your invoice states Time/Consultation and NOT Tax Preparation fees.

As for the SSDI. it if was a multi-year distrubution:
1) What was the AGI excluding all SS Income?
2) if greater than $32k we all know the outcome.

I always try to make my clients happy. You can have 100 great clients. 1 bad client can do damage regardless.

You could always engage the IRS with them on hand to insure results. Also, engage IRS on own first to insure you're on the right page!!
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