Michael Gray, CPA

Used to love going to Mike Gray. He did my taxes for 5 years. He was calm, in control, easy to work with. Had a small staff.
Then he sold out and had some joker buy the business. I kept getting invoices like $ 2000 plus. I was like wtf?!
I knew my situation was complex but never did I pay more than $ 1000 max.
They guys were trying to milk me.
What made it worse was they hired these dingle berry interns to do my returns. I knew more than they did. Probably paid them $ 10 hour. Every Time I spoke with them to correct their misinformation I was billed. Oh hell no.
Prior to that, Mike would sit down with me. Do an eval. Then turn it over to one of the cool chicks in the back. They were relaxed like him and knew their shit. No back and forth.
I have never felt so jacked in my life. I left Went elsewhere. Still trying to find a good accountant that’s fair and win win focused like the old Mike Gray of yesteryear.

I wrote a review of Michael White, the person who took over Michael Gray’s business today under his name. If I had found these reviews under White’s name I would never have hired him last year.

Without repeating what others have said, I too am a longtime client of Michael John Gray who feels like things have gone downhill since Michael White took over the business. While my experiences hasn’t been as terrible as some have described, I am looking around for someone else to do my 2013 taxes

Since the change of ownership, it has been a very stressful experience. Poor communication — does not return emails, phone calls. As they were not able to file our returns on time, they had to file for an extension — and in the process gave us wrong information about the amount of tax due. One day before the extension expired, they called us telling us they didn’t actually send our return and had to scramble to gather further signatures.
My recommendation: If you care about your taxes being handle professionally, look somewhere else.

Disaster since they switched to new ownership. Extreme delays, bad about returning emails and phone calls.

Our CPA (10+ yrs) retired and gave his files to Michael White. We provided Michael last year’s tax info for our (very) small business and ourselves. Although he didn’t call us & we couldn’t reach him, we assumed he was filing for extensions which wasn’t a problem because we knew we were getting refunds. Yesterday, we received an IRS penalty of $ 2340 because our partnership return was filed late (there are no extensions on partnership returns). This is a huge, wasteful hit that our little business cannot afford. We feel Michael should have filed the partnership return on time because he knew no extension was allowed and we would end up paying a penalty.

It makes me so sad to have to give them a poor review. Michael Jon Gray and the original staff are truly wonderful. I went to them for more than a decade and always referred them to my friends. Unfortunately, since the new owner took over, it’s really gone downhill. This past April, I was calling in a panic for days up until the tax deadline because no one in the office would return my calls. It was very stressful. My sense is that the staff is overworked and under-​resourced. It’s too bad, because Michael Jon Gray worked so hard to build up a quality practice and great reputation.

I originally started off going to Michael Gray and always had sufficient service — not the best — but fairly reliable. After Michael sold the practice to Michael White things really started to go downhill. They are slow to respond — basically don’t return phone or email message at all. Frustrated, I would just go into the office to try and get updates or answers to my tax questions — the office staff while pleasant — was unable to do much to help me and they said that Michael White was way behind. Everyone in the office seem on edge and frazzled. I’m currently looking for someone else to handle my tax needs.

We used Michael White’s office for the first time for our 2011 tax returns and didn’t have any issues. This year however, it’s been a disaster. We are now looking for a new CPA office to file our 2012 taxes because he failed to file them before April 15.
I dropped off our tax documents at the office in the middle of March and asked if our tax returns would be ready before we had to leave on April 11 for a two-​week trip abroad. I was told that the turnaround time was usually two to three weeks and that our tax returns would indeed be ready before our trip. Four weeks later and four days before our trip, still no news from the office. I called many times throughout the day but nobody picked up. I couldn’t even leave a message because their voice mail was full. The following day, I managed to talk to someone by calling the office at 7:15am. I was told that our tax returns still weren’t ready, but that they would be before we had to leave two days later. I later sent an email directly to Michael reminding him that it was important for our tax returns to be ready before our trip because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to sign them before April 15. No replies. The day before our trip, I managed to talk to someone who said that because of the large number of new clients it was unlikely that our tax returns would be ready, but that Michael would file an extension for us. We were furious, of course, but there was nothing else we could do about it. After we got back to SF, I stopped by the office to ask about the status of our tax return and was told that they still weren’t ready… no explanations, no apologies… Considering that Michael had had our documents for close to a month and a half by then and that we were tired of his overall «I don’t really care about you» feeling that we had perceived in the previous weeks, I asked to have our tax documents back because we had decided to have our tax returns done elsewhere.
I don’t know what went wrong this year with the office but we didn’t feel we were treated respectfully. If we had received a simple sign of acknowledgment, an email from Michael apologizing, a phone call explaining the situation, or anything that would have shown that he cared about our business, we would probably have stayed with the office. We didn’t get anything… too bad.

My former accountant of 12 years retired and sold his practice to Michael White. Unfortunately, it’s been a lack luster experience with little, if ANY, follow up. I’m really not sure what’s going on with my taxes and have actually called the IRS directly as I can’t get a return call/​email from his office. I try very hard to support local businesses. I’ve given this office many opportunities to improve my experience. Every time, literally, every time I’ve reached out, I haven’t received a reply. It takes me multiple attempts. This is my first negative review I’ve done on Unilocal; so I hope everyone reading this understands the gravity of my experience.

Like Tracey H, we’ve had Mike Gray doing our taxes for years. Now I just feel like I’ve been trying to get them to respond to phone calls and emails for this year’s tax return for years.
No response to Email
Voicemail boxes are full, or if you get to leave a message, it’s not returned.
Perhaps they didn’t realize tax time would be busy?
With taxes due in 3 days, and no response to my email or phone messages on whether they’re completed yet, I guess I’ll leave work early and just show up at the office
And that will certainly be the last time I ever go to their office.

I’ve been going to Mr. Michael Gray for years now and he has been my savior threw some of my toughest years in the down market to save my financials. I highly recommend him and most important he really cares and has your best interest. Two thumbs up!

Michael Gray has been preparing my returns for over 10 years and has done a fine job but this year has been different. The staff seems ill-​informed and they don’t respond to email messages. Michael himself emailed me to ask me questions about my 2012 questionnaire… after he had already prepared and filed my returns; this is very sloppy work, I will go elsewhere next year. Perhaps the merger with Michael White has been a failure for the clients.

Michael White amended our taxes last year, helped us with the complicated domestic partner tax law issues like imputed income for health benefits and community property law. We had a great experience with him.
But now we are in the process of adopting a child and really needed some tax advise. I called at least 5 times, e-​mailed several times over the past two month and got no responds. I start thinking they discriminate against gay couples who want to parent. Whatever is is, it is not professional to just not return any calls. We are not going back! Looking for another CPA now.

Point blank the people in this office stumble over each other. They don’t seem to be able to handle their workload and if you fall on the wrong side of their priorities, it will not go well for you.
We made the mistake using Michael and his partner Michael White to handle an incorporation and file taxes for 2009, 2010. Michael Gray seemed very informative at the beginning but has been MIA through most of the relationship there after. His partner tried to clean up his mess after Gray filed us improperly as a C corp rather than an S corp. And the State Tax situation is a mess of penalties since they were never filed by the firm at all.
They currently take no responsibility for these issues pending. We’ve hired a new CPA who’s bringing to light just how ineffective they are. Like how the current penalties accrued from state are a result of a no response to paperwork Gray’s people claims we received directly. When our current CPA looked up the contact all notifications actually went to Michael Gray. Its so tiresome, we have decided to pay the penalties rather than deal with the office any further.
I read on Unilocal he’s retiring. But reality is he’s already checked out.

These people are not organized at all and I don’t think they provide a good service. We’d put up with them taking forever to prepare our tax returns and not returning phone calls for years but in the 2010 tax year they
1) made a very obvious error on our state return that any cursory attempt at validation would have caught. the fact that the return was submitted with the error made me conclude that nobody was reviewing the returns prior to submission which isn’t OK.
2) didn’t submit one of of our federal tax returns at all.
3) didn’t follow up on either of the first two issues when we started calling them about them yet told us that they were.
When we got all of it finally sorted out a couple of months later we demanded and received our tax preparation fees back but we’ll never use them again. I think if they’d actually followed up on the issues they told us they were working on and if they’d called us back in a timely manner I’d feel differently but there doesn’t seem to be any meaningful method of escalation of issues over there so for the money I think we’d do better at H&R block.

:-)
Michael’s, been doing my taxes for years (over 5 yrs)… ever since his partner sold me my loft… He’s advised me on how many deductions I should consider to get the most out of my $$$ while still taking care of my tax responsibilities. I’ve always gotten money back regardless of how many deductions. He’s good… but sadly for us, he will be retiring.
Congratulations Michael Jon Gray.
I don’t care for the company that is taking over his clients. I’ll be going elsewhere.
4 woofs for Michael Jon Gray…

My husband and I have been going to Michael for years and he is a lifesaver. He has advised us on exercising stock options, capital gains tax issues, he does our taxes and handles our HOA’s accounting. I trust him completely.

I’ve been going to Gray for a few years now and I love how mellow he is even when it’s crazy season (and I only visit him during crazy season). He does a great job for a low price and his office dogs are so cute and mellow.

I was referred to this CPA from a co-​worker who said he’s a tax guy. So I left a detailed message that my partner and I would like to see the guy, and never got a return call.
I guess this guy must be really busy (it was July, not April), and doesn’t need new clients. So if you’re not already in, good luck!