Castro & Co.

I have nothing but high praise for creativity and high quality service provided by Castro & Company. Essentially the staff provide a very personal service suited to individual needs. Their knowledge and understanding of tax regulations is unparalleled which allows them to do the very best for the clients. I was not able to identify any tax attorney in the USA that would match the service I received from Castro & co. Their in depth understanding of international treaties and tax laws helped me save significant amount. Quality and effectiveness of their service far outweighs the fees charged. I wholeheartedly recommend, particularly the people coming from outside of US to avail services of Castro & Co without a second thought. I am their client for life.

Experience with the entire team was fantastic! Castro & Co. filed 3 years of my amended US tax returns, which were originally prepared by the worlds largest professional services firm, and as a result of their understanding of the tax treatment surrounding Australian superannuation, were able to generate a very large refund. I also took advantage of the additional services available including estate planning, tax planning, will preparation.

Fourth year using Castro & Co and i absolutely love them. As you know, 2019 brought about so many changes to what we can and cannot claim. In spite of all these changes, they still made the process simple. Thanks a million times over!!! This is a lie. I stop using your services because you are the worst. I’m not sure how you got my info to. You continue to file my taxes without my permission. You are the worst.

Our experience with Castro & Co. has been the best in the history of our company, all the staff from our first call requesting general info to our personal call with Mr. Castro. Definitely stress free, very professional and transparent company, they answered every single question and resolved all we had concerning our taxes. We highly recommend them.

If I could give negative stars, I would. Please avoid this firm at all costs. We provided all our tax documentation weeks before the initial April 2021 deadline with no communication as the deadline drew close. With the extension to May 2021, I received no actionable response to over a dozen emails and 4 phone calls. Even the administrative assistant who has to hear from people like me seemed exasperated at the lack of response I was getting. At 11:56 am on the filing deadline, we finally got an email back saying the team would file extensions for us (see photo below). At 6 pm on the filing deadline, we got another asking us to approve our returns. However, there was a mistake on the return that we asked them to rectify. Then, radio silence again. Another dozen or more emails and several phone calls without response over the summer. Our taxes, with the correction, were finally filed on August 5th. It's also worth mentioning that the one time we did get a response from John Castro, just before our taxes were filed, this was the reasoning John told us for the delay: "The pandemic coupled with the Dallas snow storms in February coupled with several staff members transitioning out of the firm and a lack of activity in the labor market coupled with the government incentivizing people to not actively search for jobs has created a perfect recipe for significant delays that our firm and others are all experiencing." Blaming the lack of communication in April, May, June, and July on snowstorms in February in Texas (especially when Castro and Co have offices in DC, NYC, and Miami) seems highly unprofessional. But the story does not end there. On Oct. 29th we got a notification that we had a new document in our secure vault. The IRS had sent a bill on Oct. 2nd for a late fee and interest for each month this was not paid. The bill was due Nov. 2nd. Not only did Castro and Co. take weeks to pass this along to us, the bill was for a mistake on their end. Despite being told our extensions would be filed and me asking over 20 times for confirmation extensions were filed, extensions were NOT filed and now the IRS wants ~$500 in late fees. Back to writings and calling with no response from John or a few others. Today, I get this email from John (see photo below): "Alfonso already explained on November 12 that this is your responsibility. Stop emailing about this or the client engagement is terminated." I respond by calling John and leaving a voicemail that says we never received an email from Alfonso. 14 minutes later I get this email from John: "Jenny, Below is the email Alfonso sent. Also, you’re terminated as a client effective immediately." Let me be very clear, I have never had any response from this office on the latest issue aside from John's emails today. The email that I did not receive from Alfonso was much more polite and said that the onus for filing extensions falls on the taxpayer, not the tax preparer. While this makes sense, we were told Castro and Co would file our extensions. If I had just been told that we needed to file our own extensions, I would've happily done this. Now, Castro and Co is telling us that the late fee is our responsibility and John is responding with less-than-professional emails. Please do not work with this firm. While our tax returns were well done, the abysmal professionalism of the leadership and the lack of communication with clients is more than enough to warrant avoiding this firm. I do believe there are good people there at Castro and Co who do a good job. I can only imagine that, if John treats his paying clients the way I have been treated, that it must be a difficult place to work. I hope the good people there are able to find roles at firms that will treat them well and allow them to showcase their expertise.