Flitestar

Hey there!

Im filing taxes for the first time since we moved to ATL and I am looking for a good CPA that does tax preps for airline crews around ATL. If its in the Peachtree City/South Atlanta area even better!!

Any recommendations?

Thanks...
FS

JayHub

Use Pilot-Tax. These guys know what they're doing.

Milo

AirlineCPA.com is good. Based at ORD not ATL, but handles clients from all over the country. He’s a FAR 121 pilot and a licensed CPA.

bhag

I have used this guy for the past three years. He is Atlanta based off the Marietta square. He is also a pilot for JB and has a Masters in Tax! when I first came to him, he ammended my previous three years returns and got me a huge amount of money back, almost 6K. Very Good Very reasonable!

Flitestar

Great info guys, thanx!

We bought a condo this year, and its my first full year with the airlines, Turbotax wont cut it so looking for PROs to prep my taxes...

Looking forward to that first time home owners credit...

Thx!
FS

WorldDC10

I have used Turbotax for years and never had any issues with it. (I also use ez-perdiem to work out how much underpaid we are for perdiem on all of the overseas flying we do.) Other than that I just keep a running tax file during the year and input the numbers into Turbotax.


Obviously I don't expect details of your taxes. But in general terms can you tell us what areas you missed claiming that the CPA found to get you 6k back?

I often wonder if the cost of a CPA would be worth it for me. So far I haven't seen a reason to but if you list things that I missed then I could be easily persuaded!!

Thanks

Flitestar

Well, I guess that raises up another question... How much do these CPAs charge?(aprox?) What's reasonable? Are we talking a few hundred????

Thx!
FS

bhag

MY cpa has a form that you fill out at the begining of the tax season. There are things that are tax deductable that I never would have thought of (haircuts,internet,dry cleaning, uniforms,) those are things that turbotax may or may not account for. The big thing that got me the 6K was he had me tell him how many two,three, and four day trips I did during the year. Because we spend our time on the road and get paid per diem, the goverment has extra allowences for certain cities. Now, the 6K was state and federal combined, over a three year period, but that is money I would have never gotten if I had never gone to someone that knows what they are dong, and since he is a Pilot himself, it gives me the warm and fuzzies. He charges like 200.00 for a basic return, but if you have rental properties and other extra stuff it will cost extra.

WorldDC10

The tax deduction for perdiem - or at least the deduction for (I think it is 80% for transportation workers this year) a percentage of the difference between the allowed amount and what you get back from your employer is easy to do. Go to ezperdiem.com and input your cities - it works worldwide - and then input the amount into turbotax. Ezperdiem tells you where in turbotax to do this. No need for a CPA, although some guys like to use them in case of an audit.

AirlineCPA

Haircuts? I’d double check that one. Take a look at the Irving TX case 2/3 of the way down in this link, the part where it says:

Irving Texas, tax preparer sentenced to 36 months in prison

In this case it wasn’t just the haircuts but a combination of things. Still, I have heard of pilots, military guys, and prison guards trying to deduct haircuts and in all the cases I saw, the IRS classified them as non-deductible personal grooming expense. I’m not knocking your guy, but I don’t take them for my clients.

AirlineCPA.com