Conversation

Ben Kuhn
@benskuhn
The Trusted Professional Paradox: 1. People hire professionals to do things they don't know how to do 2. ~Nobody who hires a pro can tell if they're crap (except in v obvious ways) 3. 90% of everything is crap ∴ the pro you've hired is 90% likely to be crap
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Ben Kuhn
@benskuhn
(Certifications probably weed out the worst of the crap, but a lot of it remains: for example, I just had a rather expensive CPA incorrectly tell me that my correct belief was wrong, then give a prima facie highly implausible excuse for why he got confused.)
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Ben Kuhn
@benskuhn
I've heard similar stories from the only other person I know with a tax situation their accountant hadn't seen before. I wonder if the right move is to have two different accountants give you the same advice and tax prep, and then have them argue out any inconsistencies.
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Ben Kuhn
@benskuhn
To be fair to professionals, a lot of the ways that they do a crap job involve getting fiddly little obscure details wrong. Unfortunately, the world is complicated, so fiddly little obscure details sometimes matter a huge amount. This means that not doing a crap job is very hard.
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Ben Kuhn
@benskuhn
In this case, it seems like the author got a lot of signs that "Brenda" didn't know what she was doing before he gave up on her. I think that was a mistake—it usually makes sense to stop working with someone at the first sign of cluelessness. I've rarely seen this get better.
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Ben Kuhn
@benskuhn
Relatedly, the accountant who replaced the one I just parted ways with says their predecessor overestimated my tax liability by about a factor of 1.5, which would have reduced my ability to donate this year by ~20%.
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