A TAX SEASON STORY

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OOPS!
I forgot to include the followingitem in yesterday’s review of the recent tax filing season.
A long-time client, whose returns Ihave been preparing since 1984, got married in 2011 to a non-client whose taxreturns had been prepared by a CPA firm.
The couple had given their 2011 “stuff”to the spouse’s CPA for review, and the CPA generated joint federal and NJstate tax returns for the couple.
The client asked me to review thepreliminary returns generated by the CPA before finalizing and filing them.
Based on a quick review of the federalreturn, and my knowledge of my client’s prior returns (a copy of my client’s2010 federal and state returns had been provided to the CPA along with the 2011“stuff”), it appeared that the federal return was ok (I did not verify actualentries to original source documents such as W-2s and 1099s, nor did I checkthe math – I merely reviewed it for “theory”).
However as soon as I looked at theCPA-generated 2011 NJ-1040 I discovered a glaring error – to the tune of about$1,800.00. 
Havingme, a previously unenrolled preparer, review the returns generated by a CPA (whodoes not have to take a test to verify tax knowledge as I must eventually do)saved the couple about $1,800.00 in state income tax! 
I did not need to enter theinformation into a tax preparation software package to find the error – my nakedeyes spotted it right away.    
I have been saying for years that Ihave found more errors on tax returns, federal and state, prepared by CPAs thanany other category of preparer – including “self-prepared” returns.
Needless to say I felt greatjoy!  And so did the client and his newspouse.
TTFN