They made a mistake on our 1997 taxes which caused us to underpay a CA tax due, which came back to bite us all these years later with interest and penalty, as you might imagine.\r
I went to them for assistance in figuring out what went wrong, and Robert apparently decided it would be easier, for the purpose of weaseling out, to manufacture some ridiculous umbrage at something very innocent I had said during that meeting, and so subsequently (using a mild profanity, mind you, but just briefly...repeated twice, though) told me he was offended and that he was not talking to me ever again and would communicate only through his lawyer.\r
So meanwhile, I figure it all out myself with the help of the CA tax board (very good, by the way) and get the right forms, make an eloquent and air-tight argument on paper, and end up getting the interest and penalty dropped and then just paid the original tax...which we would have done gladly IN THE FIRST PLACE, had the incompetent Zappitelli known his way around the tax laws that he was PAID to know. It's not like it was some super out-of-the-ordinary situation; Zappitelli flat out did not realize that CA taxes on a ""global"" income basis (still didn't, after all those years)\r
...so it was ignorance of a basic fact, causing a well-paying client a headache, pure and simple; but, there was a failure to even acknowledge that. You know what the weasel tactic was? He had his lawyer inform me that 7 years was the limit of accountability for any errors. What about personal accountability? What about competence? What about honesty?\r
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Mistakes happen, we are all human. I'm not inclined to be angry over a mistake, if it is acknowledged and dealt with in a professional manner. In this case, though, I was treated like a chump. When Zappitelli expressed his ridiculous umbrage, he used a sly character attack, as he said: ""you are only out for yourself in this thing"". Now, think about that: here is a problem, OUR tax problem, my wife and I's, that is a result of a mistake HE made, on a job he was PAID to do. And so, he got offended because I made the completely innocent remark ""well, you probably have some sort of coverage for this kind of thing, right?"". Completely innocent, simply because I really don't know how it works, okay? But his umbrage was, he said, based completely on that remark, which ironically was made BECAUSE I'm a nice person I didn't want to think that, if it was found to be his mistake (it was) that it would impact his bottom line very much. Okay? So, I guess no good deed goes unpunished.
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