Safe Harbor CPAs and Tax Consultants

Alex Castillo _{on Google}

May 15th, 2023

Highly recommend. I was helped by Chun Wong, and I am extremely happy with their services. Everything was flawless: communication, politeness, and professionalism. Will work with them again in the future.

Bryant L. _{on Yelp}

Jan 26th, 2022

Sent a Yelp request to help file my taxes and they responded asking some screening questions for my tax situation. They told me to email them directly with the answers. Emailed them Jan 13th (no response), follow up email jan 19th (no response)...I guess they are too busy and I'm not worth their time

Candace B. _{on Yelp}

Jan 4th, 2022

My company went through an acquisition and I enlisted Safe Harbor to help me project the taxes I would owe as a result.  Early on in the process it became clear that there was an error in their projections.  The stock from my original company was being paid out as a cash component and also as stock in the new company.  Safe Harbor kept mistakenly treating the cash I was given as the cost basis for the stock I was also given.  I pointed out this error as soon as I got the original projections and Chun offered to set up a meeting.  In the meeting he interrupted me several times insisting I should just trust their projections.I then got an email from Chun saying that actually there was an error and the cash component was *not* the cost basis for the stock I was given.  At this point I had lost all confidence in the accuracy of the information I was getting from Safe Harbor.  I asked them to stop working on this and I enlisted the services of a different accounting firm.I then received a bill for over $6K from Safe Harbor.  Almost all of the hours they were charging me for were for the hours they spent going back and forth after I had initially pointed out the error.The other accounting firm I asked to work on the same problem with the same information quickly gave me accurate projections and billed me for 2 hours of work.

Mike T. _{on Yelp}

Dec 27th, 2021

My experience is similar to most of the other 1-star reviews.Concern #1* Safe Harbor (SH) offered an estimate of $2500-3000, but in the end they sent me an invoice with a total charge of $6350. Exceeding an estimate by more than 100% is unacceptable IMO.* There was never any warning that we had exceeded the original estimate, or that the work was different than originally expected. Throughout the 3.5 month intermittent relationship, I was expecting that we were inside the original estimate. In fact, we had blown through the high-end estimate in the first two days.* I know other people in my situation who received similar assistance from other vendors for $3000-3500 total.* When I expressed surprise about the high invoice amount, Chun never acknowledged that missing an estimate by so much was any kind of a problem, and never really explained what had gone wrong in the original estimate. (Eventually, he did give me a $120 discount, or 1.8%.)* They asked for a large ($2500) retainer fee up front.* At one point, Chun compared the bill amount to my AGI for the year, apparently in an attempt to make the charge appear irrelevant and I should just pay it.Concern #2* SH made numerous, large mistakes while working through my situation. I think (hope) we eventually settled on accurate calculations, but they spent a lot of time revisiting the same work to come up with new results, and I ended up paying for these hours.* I spent a lot of time writing lengthy emails explaining to them that they had made errors and suggesting they should look at issues in a different way.* There were numerous instances where it felt like Chun was not paying attention to what I was saying. I expect this contributed to the mistakes mentioned above.* I eventually felt like SH was educating themselves at my expense.Concern #3* The tax strategies SH offered me were simplistic at best. Sell your underwater stocks for tax-loss harvesting. That was it. (This was a strategy I was already aware of.)* Chun seemed unfamiliar with the tax advantages of donating appreciated stocks to charity, when I brought up this possible strategy.Given the mistakes that were made, the simplistic advice, and the time I spent on my end correcting the errors, I received nowhere near $6230 in value from this relationship.I expect that there are certain cases where Chun and his team have strong expertise and can provide useful insights. However, I believe there can sometimes be a large disconnect between the value Chun believes he's delivering vs. the value he's actually delivering. In these cases, you may be in for some big surprises in what you get, how long it takes to get it, and how much you need to pay.