Stephenson Lucy B CPA

Lucy has been my CPA for 20 years. She is awesome advocate. She charges a fair rate for the very good service I receive. She has guided me through a couple of small businesses, three acquisitions and a lawsuit or two. It’s great to have a CPA who has your back.

While I was working with her, although she charged me a lot for what she was doing, it was ok for me since she is a very nice lady her self. But when I moved to other city and I wanted to change my accountant to someone who lives near by me, she send me bill with huge charges !
Also, she charged me a lot before, although she didn’t do the proper tax ride off for me ! And I notice this since I am working with another CPA now!
I wrote a good review here, but I had to update this to be more accurate !
I wish I have read Tutti’s review sooner !
2 star is because she is being nice and respectful, accepting me when I really needed (appreciated for that), and she has an eye if you miss a piece.
Since two important parts which is tax ride off, and reasonable pricing is missing here, I have to take off 3 stars although she is a very nice person.

Lucy has been doing my taxes for the last 15 years… I initially found her through a Business Directory published in my neighborhood.
She has kept me on the straight and narrow with the IRS including helpingme structure and maintain a trust after the death of my parents. She has also directed me to other resources in the Legal and Investment communities over the years who were very helpful.
And besides… I just like her.
I can’t speak highly enough of Lucy and her staff.

I did my homework before choosing Lucy as my accountant. Her name came up several times when I polled attorneys I worked with and they all had good things to say about her.
Lucy has been doing my taxes for 5 years now and I really trust and like her. Over the years I’ve had both simple and complex tax returns and I’ve never felt overcharged. In fact there was one year where she had to sort out some Virginia tax law issues and I was amazed that my bill wasn’t higher! One last thing: she has a good sense of humor. Not always true for accountants and a nice bonus when you can find it!

I wanted to share our somewhat negative experiences around the customer service and billing rates with Lucy Stephenson to warn others to do due diligence when interacting with CPAs.
Lucy did our 2010 taxes. She charges what I thought was a fair rate of $ 145 /​hour and verbally had mentioned that it would probably take 3 – 4 hours to do our straightforward taxes (2 full-​time jobs, mortgage interests, no stock sales). There wasn’t a whole lot of time spent interacting with us or answering questions… it was a very straightforward and slightly cold transaction, but professional. She ultimately took 5.25 hours to complete the taxes, which was a bit high, but the work seemed good.
The big issue came when we asked her to estimate our paycheck withholdings for 2011. We were shocked to receive a bill for $ 435 dollars to perform the work. We had a miscommunication where I understood that the service would be included in the $ 780 tax bill already spent while Lucy insisted it wasn’t and she had spent even more time on it than she’d charged us. I attempted to talk to her to resolve the situation, but she was quite hostile on the phone («I have over 200 clients and don’t need to talk to you.»)
5 hours for straightforward taxes and 3 hours to calculate a straightforward W-​4 withholding??? Needless to say, we won’t be returning.
While a CPA can charge whatever they think is fair, I would caution others to get a projected cost and time estimate from Lucy before engaging her in work. That could save you much grief in the end.
4 stars for what I think is a good job on our return
1 star for poor service and extortionist prices