Getting Started
Getting started
The first conversation costs nothing, ends with a written number, and requires no documents from you.
The first conversation
This page covers the part before there is an engagement: the first conversation, what to have in front of you, and how to get your history out of another preparer's office. What happens after you sign, step by step, is laid out in how it works.
The consultation is free, and it is a conversation rather than a menu reading. You describe your situation. I ask about the parts that usually cause trouble: how many states are in play, whether K-1s are involved, whether there is an entity that nobody has looked at since the day it was formed. You leave with a written number and a straight answer about whether you need me at all.
Sometimes that answer is no. One W-2, the standard deduction, no state complications, no side income: consumer software handles that return correctly for a fraction of what I charge, and I will say so rather than take the engagement. Who this is and isn't for makes that case at length.
Everything starts at the contact form. No phone number or email address appears anywhere on this site, and that is deliberate. Published addresses get scraped, and the robocalls outlive the page they were harvested from.
From first message to a number
You send the form
A few sentences is plenty. What you do, what changed this year, what made you go looking. It comes to me, because there is nobody else here to route it to.
We talk
This is the free consultation. No charge, no obligation, and no follow-up sequence if you decide against it. Most situations get clear in a single conversation.
I score the complexity
The fee comes off countable things: number of income sources, states filed, schedules and forms required, entities involved, transaction volume, foreign accounts, and whether prior years need cleanup. Those are the questions I am asking on the call.
You get a written estimate
A firm number, in writing, before any work begins. It comes off the same complexity scale every client is measured against, not off a read of what your situation seems worth to you.
You decide
If you move forward, an engagement letter comes over for signature and the portal opens. If you don't, we are finished. I will not chase you.
What to have handy
None of this is required in order to talk. Have it and the estimate gets sharper. Skip it and the conversation still works. The pricing page shows how the scale is built and what actually moves a number up or down.
- Last year's federal and state returns, every page, schedules attached
- What you expect to earn this year, and roughly how much of it is W-2 versus 1099 or K-1
- Every state you lived in, worked in, or owned property in
- Any IRS or state letter, including the notice number printed in the upper right corner
- Whether you own an entity, what type it is, and whether an S election was ever filed
- What changed since last year: a marriage, a move, a house, a new practice, an inheritance
- Any year you did not file
- The question that sent you looking for a CPA in the first place
Switching from your current preparer
Switching is less dramatic than people expect. There is no form, nothing to file with the IRS, and no requirement that you notify anyone. You do not owe your old preparer an explanation, and you certainly do not have to have that conversation before you talk to me.
What matters is paper. Get complete copies of the last two or three returns, and specifically the pieces that go missing in a handoff: the depreciation schedule, S-corp basis on Form 7203, capital loss and passive loss carryforwards, any charitable carryover, any Form 3115 method change, and any state pass-through entity tax election. A return without its depreciation schedule is a return someone has to rebuild from scratch.
If a former preparer stalls on the request, Circular 230 section 10.28(a) is the rule that applies: a practitioner must promptly return the client records needed to comply with federal tax obligations, and a dispute over fees generally does not excuse that. The honest caveat is that where state law permits withholding records over unpaid fees, they may only have to hand back the records that attach to the return itself.
Mid-year switches are routine. The two cleanest moments are just after a return is filed and just after a notice arrives. If a prior return is genuinely unavailable, IRS transcripts cover part of the gap: a wage and income transcript lists the W-2s, 1099s and K-1s reported under your Social Security number, and Form 4506-T requests one. A transcript is not a return, though. It will not show your depreciation schedule or your basis.
I came over to Nottingham after being with another CPA for many years. The transition was very smooth, and I love the personal attention I get from Hunter.
Documents, and when they actually show up
Document gathering happens after the engagement letter is signed, not before. It runs through the portal instead of email, because a tax document sent as an attachment keeps living on every mail server it passed through.
Inside Tax Nucleus, uploads land in Your Files, foldered by tax year, with a record of who uploaded what and when. A progress bar on the return tells you where things stand, so you are not emailing me to ask. The public client login is being finalized; until it opens, existing clients coordinate through the contact form.
The timing of the documents themselves is out of both our hands. W-2s and most 1099s arrive in January. Consolidated brokerage statements are routinely corrected in February and March, which is why filing early with a taxable brokerage account is a dependable way to end up amending. K-1s are the real variable: a partnership or S-corp that extends its own return on Form 7004 has until September, and your individual return waits on it.
Why April is the worst month to start
For the 2026 tax year, individual returns and payment were due April 15, 2027, and partnership and S-corp returns were due March 15, 2027. The extension runs to October 15, 2027. Dates shift by a day or two from year to year, but the shape holds. During filing season a new engagement usually means an extension, which is an ordinary tool and not a mark against you.
The better argument for starting early has nothing to do with the filing deadline. Almost everything that changes a number has a date attached, and most of those dates fall before December 31. An S election on Form 2553 is generally due within two months and fifteen days of the start of the tax year it is meant to cover. Estimated payments land April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15, and the June installment covers only April and May, which is why the word quarterly misleads people every year. Retirement plan choices, entity changes, and the timing of income and deductions all have to happen while the year is still open.
If we first speak in March, I can prepare an accurate return. I cannot change what it says. Preparation is history. Planning is the part that moves the number, and it lives between roughly May and December.
An extension moves your filing date to October 15. It does not move your payment date. Anything owed was still due April 15, and interest runs from that day forward.
Further reading
Questions, answered plainly.
Is the consultation really free, or free until the paperwork shows up?
Free. There is no charge for the conversation or for the written estimate that comes out of it. Nothing is billed until you have signed an engagement letter with a number on it, and you see that number before you sign anything.
Do I have to tell my current CPA before I talk to you?
No. There is nothing to notify and no form to sign to leave. Most people talk to me first and decide afterward. The only thing you eventually need from them is complete copies of your prior returns with the schedules attached.
You're in Charlotte and I'm not. Does that matter?
No. Practice before the IRS is federal, so a CPA can prepare federal returns and represent clients before the IRS regardless of which state issued the license, and CPA mobility rules cover work across state lines. I work with clients nationwide. Nothing in the process requires you to be in the room.
I have not filed in a couple of years. Is it too late to start?
Late is a fixable condition, and unfiled years do not resolve themselves. The answer is almost always to file them, oldest first, and then deal with what is owed; the IRS generally looks at the last six years when deciding whether you are compliant. Penalties for filing late and paying late can often be reduced or removed. The estimated tax penalty almost never can, and that distinction shapes the order we do things in.
What does the estimate not cover?
It covers the scope we discussed. The usual exception is prior-year cleanup: unreconciled books, a basis schedule nobody ever maintained, a year that was never filed. That is separate work, scored on the same complexity scale and quoted before it starts. It does not appear on an invoice you did not see coming.
The first conversation is free.
Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you plainly whether you need me.
Schedule a Free Consultation