I need to give a Rita hug

[jklcpa]

Mom and son are both clients and mom thought she'd slip it by me to sign the e-file forms for her adult son. I guess she thought I wouldn't notice that the signatures are all in the same handwriting and that she returned them all together in the same envelope. She tried to lie and say it is his signature, but didn't have a response when I told her that the signature is vastly different than that of the prior two years.  All of a sudden she remembered that he won't be able to sign until next week because he is on call for his job, so that is the real reason she tried to get this by me.

What makes me even more angry besides the lying is that this person is a bank officer and definitely knows better.  I may just fire her because of this.

 

ETA - and when I say "adult son" this guy is 34 years old, not a child that recently reached the age of 18!

[Lee B]

That is really not cool, especially given her job responsibilities.

"Trust is earned not given"

[Lion EA]

Hug her hard.

[Possi]

Ohhhhhhh @RitaB!!! 

[Catherine]

I'd fire her, too.  That response would be different if she's immediately said, "he's on call at work and asked me to sign for him - I guess that was dumb, huh?" because we all have oopsies especially regarding family.  The lying immediately means I can't trust anything else she ever tells me, and I have enough irksome clients without that hanging over me.

Good luck with them both, Judy.

[Margaret CPA in OH]

Yup, fire away.  It isn't worth it.  I've never been audited but want absolutely clean records, to the best of my ability.  And you are correct, how can you trust anything going forward?

[Lee B]

I was going through documents a long time client dropped off, when it suddenly registered on my brain that I was seeing  a new address on some of the husband's tax docs.

So I called him and asked whether they are perhaps separated? He says, yes but we weren't at the end of the year. Then I look at the engagement letter and the spouse's signature

amazingly looked like his writing. I already knew that this guy wasn't the most truthful client I had. So that's it!  I'm done, returning his documents back to him.

In 28 years, I have dealt with divorced clients only once. That experience convinced me to never do that again. The risk reward relationship of dealing with divorced clients

is not very good.

[Lion EA]

Exactly. Fire them both. Or, if your favorite of the couple wants to file MFS, keep only her or him.