Client Reviews of Michael M. Bakke, CPA

For years I did my own fairly complex tax returns on TurboTax. For tax year 2011 we had it more complex as a result of my wife's inheritance, so I had Michael Bakke do our return. Simply put he charged way too much ($1250...compared to the $300 I paid next year to a tax attorney for preparing an equally or more complex return) and he incorrectly figured up my loss on sale of the inherited property, to the point where we paid $3521 in taxes when we should have had no tax liability at all and in fact should have had carry forward losses generated to "use" against our next year's income. That happened because, despite me telling him of it, he refused to enter about $210,000 in costs that were part of our basis in obtaining that property. (The tax lawyer whom we used the next year on reviewing our 2011 return and facts confirmed that I was correct and Mr. Bakke was incorrect in not including those costs in the basis.... and the 2012 return our new guy prepared with a similar property sale was done correctly in our favor.) On net Mr. Bakke's mistake cost us something in the neighborhood of $10,000. (Can't calculate exactly... it's a complex "what if" and now 9 years past it.) Mistakes can happen, but when paying top dollar for expert help it's most disappointing to have such costly mistakes. And it is possible that Mr. Bakke might say it was not a "mistake".... that it was his professional "judgment call" that the extra basis costs I listed were not correct (though the tax lawyer we used next year used would disagree.) It is my impression that Mr. Bakke's approach to tax preparation is to be _so_ overly cautious to not incorrectly make a judgment call that might incorrectly favor the client.... more concerned about not even remotely risking crossing an IRS-line than minimizing the taxpayer's liability. For those reasons (high preparation fees and apparent insufficient motive to optimize the taxpayer's return) that for most people I could not recommend Mr. Bakke and I would not use him again.

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