Average Cost for Tax Prep

Originally Posted by babyzilla

Thanks to all of you for the affirmation and letting me know I'm not crazy. So after a lot of back and forth and basically a burned bridge, I paid her $500 because that's the most I was willing to pay even though I was expecting $300 at the most. She obviously did not like that. There are a couple things to note here. One, I did sign a legally binding contract that basically said we owe her whatever she charges (again, this was stupid of me in retrospect, but I never thought it would be this bad). Two, she explained how she had to do all these extra steps for us. My issue with this is some of you who responded clearly have a lot more to deal with and your filing costs seems completely reasonable, if not, low in some cases, so there's just no excuse for the $950 - I don't care what she says about that. Three, I could be wrong, but I couldn't walk away because she did complete her services and was ready to file. If I walked away that would have probably made matters worse and she has all our information.
All things considered, we are moving on with life and definitely with a different CPA. However, I am worried she may try to mess with our filing to get back at us and I would never know unfortunately. She emailed me "one final time" with all the reasons why it was $950 again and how she was rightful to charge that much and ended with "I will write off $450, the balance of your invoice, as a bad debt." I'm assuming this is for her internal bookkeeping for her business and not a collection agency on our behalf...can anyone confirm?

ARE THERE ANY TRUSTWORTHY CPAs IN THE PA/DMV AREA ON THIS FORUM??? Would be nice to know for the next go-around!