Julie W. Butler, CPA

It pains me to write this. Julie Butler was our accountant for 9 years. We never had problems, except last year in 2017 we noticed severe communication problems – not answering email or calls. Nonetheless we stuck with her, which was a giant mistake. 2018 was a disaster. Julie had a pattern of not answering any communications. Before the 2017 taxes were due, my wife finally had to drive to her house to retrieve the tax documents because her non-communication was chronic and we started to see the writing on the wall. She met my wife at the house and swore up and down that everything was fine, she would do our taxes next week and that she had family issues. Reassured, we let her keep the taxes. I traveled to Europe on business. As we came upon tax day in April we heard nothing. No forms to sign, no emails, nothing. No answers to emails and calls. We missed our tax deadline!!! After that I messaged and emailed and called Julie advising that she needs to return all of our forms and documents immediately via FEDEX and that she was fired due to breach of trust and unprofessional conduct. She even failed to return our master documents, even after that. I then , a week later, advised her in no uncertain terms that we now considered her non-return of our master documents as property theft . After more than a week we finally had to resort to going to the local police, who went to the house to retrieve the documents. She had never even opened the package! It was unbelievably stressful, shockingly unprofessional and completely insane. Ironically, she filed for an IRS extension but failed to advise us of such, so as far as we were concerned we were now in violation of tax law and set up for fines and penalties. She claims that it was all due to illness of her father. Yet, when my wife was there she was at her house with her family and her father is in Southern Connecticut. It would have taken mere minutes to answer any of our numerous communications over more than a month. To text a line or two takes a mere minute. To make a quick call is easy, even in critical family situations we do so to our employers and clients. We would have understood if she needed personal time. Everyone sometimes has personal or family issues and we all take a moment to let people know what is is going on and to ask for time-off or for consideration. But, nothing. Not a text, call or email asking for an extension or advising us what was going on. She simply failed to do our taxes on time, did not advise or communicate with us and then refused to return our master documents. We unfortunately assess that Julie Butler is going through some type of crisis, which is a most disconcerting situation for a CPA accountant. For us to have to resort to involving law enforcement under the threat of having to file criminal charges against our own tax accountant is an unbelievably undesirable, yet totally unnecessary situation. We now conclude that she is untrustworthy. Beware!