Chilson Business & Tax Services

Minus one would be the rating, were it available. I have owned a number of businesses since 1972 and over that period of years, have employed 8 different accounting firms. I have never had an experience as unprofessional as the one which ended my relationship with Chilson Tax and Accounting.
We began using Denise Chilson in 2011 (for both business & personal returns + bookkeeping) and felt that she was highly knowledgeable and very personable. The only complaint we had over the years was that she was always very busy, thus impossible to reach if you had questions or needed to talk about something. You had to leave numerous messages and make appointments for teleconferences. She had random office assistants, but never a steady staff, which hindered
communications as she was out of the office quite a bit. But over all, that worked out OK and she never missed a deadline – until later. She had done a great job for us and had power of attorney for filing. We had no reason to worry– in hindsight, it was dumb to trust anyone in such important matters.
Sometime in 2012 we heard she purchased another firm, greatly increasing her work load. Although she always talked about adding staff, assistants were very intermittent and mostly just message-​takers. She became harder to reach but assured us that everything was being filed on time. We kept waiting for her to return our records and filed copies (which she had usually accumulated and returned every few months) and the time period stretched out longer and longer. Finally we found ourselves leaving texts, voice mails, emails, faxes – which all fell on deaf ears. She refused to return calls or our materials.
Next, we received a notice from the State that our 2012 return was not received. We reached Denise who assured us that it had been filed and that the state had lost many that were E-​filed. She said she had contacted them and was re-​filing. After receiving another late notice with penalties and threats of liens, we were advised to get a copy from the IRS and refile it ourselves with the state. When we attempted to obtain it, we learned that the federal return had not been filed either. Bottom line: much to our dismay, we learned Denise had blatantly lied to us about any of them being filed – not our business, payroll, or personal returns.
At that point, she was totally avoiding us so we drove to her office (a 3-​hour round-​trip drive for us) and demanded that her receptionist help us find all of our records. The office was chaotic – every room had piles of unfinished work all over the floor – dozens and dozens of them in each room. We found what we could, but much was missing. We obtained a new accountant, and then had to spend a large sum to hire our old bookkeeper to come back in and recreate everything – because Denise had done much of our bookkeeping along with the taxes. In hindsight, we were very sorry to have outsourced this function, but never could have predicted such unprofessional behavior from someone with whom we had a good business relationship.
Whatever affected her tax service business still remains a mystery but it appears she may have become overwhelmed by taking on too much work and kept — unrealistically — thinking she would be able to somehow complete it. The sad thing is that she did not have the decency to let us know — we would have gladly gone elsewhere than have had to suffer the consequences which ensued from the late filings. This affected our payment record with both the state and the IRS for both our business and personal filings. The hours spent on the phone trying to get through to the state and the IRS to attempt to get penalty abatements and reductions were unbelievable. This was a very costly mistake.
Through other business associates, we have since learned of at least 3 other individuals who have had similar experiences. Lesson learned: Don’t trust appearances and words – demand proof. This was a very expensive lesson. After this experience, it is our opinion that Denise Chilson would be far more effective working for a firm where she is highly supervised and not running her own business.