People often ask us who is the best accountant in San Francisco? Even more specifically, why ask something such as who is the best accountant for a small business, or who is the best accountant in San Francisco near the Financial District etc.
Photo credit: Derek Giovanni Photography via Foter.com / CC BY-ND
As accountants, we are very keen to the details. Obviously, as we are preparing the taxes for many businesses and high income individuals here in San Francisco, we realize that we have, on the one hand, the details of their individual income and assets, and on the other hand, the complexities of the tax code here in California as well as at the federal level.
As they say, the devil is in the details!
So when selecting the best accountant in San Francisco, you have to step back and look at a number of variables. Let’s get one variable out of the way which is rather stupid. This is the variable as to whether the accountant is near or not to you, your home, or your business. You may work in one of the fancy high-rises in downtown San Francisco, or the so-called Financial District, or you may own a few restaurants who are out in the Avenues, or in Noe Valley, or somewhere else city. Or, you may be a high-tech worker who only lives in San Francisco, but commutes southward to Google or Facebook. “Near you” is in and of itself a variable, not a constant
The Best Accountant Nearby
Yes, people often search for the best accountant nearby, using the Google vernacular of “accountant near me.” That’s kind of strange when you think about it, as if you’re on a Google bus going from San Francisco to Mountain View, for example, “near me” is literally a moving target
But more important the physical location of your accountant is really not very important, especially in this Internet age. We are a boutique accounting firm and are located not in downtown San Francisco or in the Financial District but rather out in the Avenues on Geary Street. We may not physically be near you, in other words.
So when you’re looking for the best accountant in the financial district of San Francisco, we may qualify vis-a-vis the first part of that equation as in best accountant but not the second part of the equation as in in the financial district.
Leaving aside this issue of geographic location, other aspects of being the best accountant have to do with things like whether they’ll pay a lot of attention to your financial situation, and dig into the details, whether they’ll provide excellent customer service, or not. Many of the big fancy accountants have big fancy offices that look very impressive, but the intellectual quality of the work has little or, we would argue, nothing to do with the financing’s of their gigs in San Francisco. You pay a lot for that big, beautiful office, and that does not necessarily translate into the best accountant in San Francisco, whether in downtown or the financial district, or anywhere else.
Our vision of the best accountant review is an accountant who really cares, and one who digs into the details of your situation, and then matches those details to a very skillful understanding of the tax code so as to minimize your taxation in the short and long run within the limitations of the law. In that way, ironically, you may find, that the best accountant in the financial district isn’t in the financial district at all!
