Why Work With a CPA?

Most people who contact me are not looking for a philosophy of accounting. They have an IRS letter, a state notice, a foreign account they have just realised should have been reported, or a return that no longer matches the facts. The question underneath is practical: who should handle this, and what difference does the credential make?

What a CPA licence means for your file

A Certified Public Accountant is licensed by a state board, has passed the uniform examination, has met an experience requirement, and keeps the licence with continuing education every year. I hold Massachusetts License 26369, issued in 2009, and I have worked in tax and accounting since 2000. The licence is not a promise about results. It is a standard of care that I am accountable to — before the Board of Public Accountancy, before the IRS under Circular 230, and under the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct.

That accountability matters most when the facts are messy. Tax law turns on specific attributes — dates, elections, ownership percentages, residency days, account balances on particular days. A CPA is trained to find those attributes in source documents and to say plainly when the answer is “I don’t know yet.”

What I do, and what I do not do

I represent taxpayers before the IRS and state departments of revenue in examinations, collections and international compliance matters. I prepare and amend returns, international information returns and streamlined submissions. I explain what the notice means, what the options are, and what each option costs in fees, time and risk.

I am not an attorney. I do not give legal advice, draft governance documents, or represent clients in court. When a matter needs a lawyer — a criminal referral, litigation, an entity dispute — I say so, and I work alongside counsel where that is appropriate. I do not perform attest services, and I do not hold a CPA licence in any state other than Massachusetts; I practise in other states under CPA mobility rules for representation and tax work.

Working directly with the CPA

This is a one-person practice by design. When you write to me, I read the request. When I quote the work, I have looked at your facts. When the engagement is accepted, I prepare the workpapers and sign the filings. There is no intake team, no junior preparer and no salesperson between us. The tradeoff is real: I do not accept every case, I may ask for a paid review before quoting complex work, and I can be slower near deadlines. How an engagement runs, from intake to close, is described on the How It Works page.

What to expect from an engagement

Every engagement starts with the facts. Discovery — the documents, the transcripts, the yes-or-no answers to the questions that decide the tax treatment — comes before any strategy. I quote fixed fees for defined scopes wherever the work allows it, and the fee schedule I publish is the one on my store. Where a result depends on the IRS or a state agency, I will tell you what I can request, what the agency decides, and how long these things typically take. I will not tell you what the outcome will be, because I do not control it.

When a CPA is the right fit

A CPA is usually the right first call for an IRS or state notice, an unfiled or incorrect return, foreign account and entity reporting, penalty abatement requests, payment arrangements and offers in compromise, and any matter where the numbers have to be reconstructed before anyone can decide anything. If you are not sure whether your matter fits, the contact page is the place to start; I will tell you honestly if it does not.

Edward Parsons, CPA · Massachusetts License 26369 · Remote practice, meetings anywhere in the U.S. by appointment.