@alangeh While I totally agree with everything you said here I've had this problem for a while now.
1) As a small business, I don't do enough volume of transactions or inbound and outbound to merit a full time book keeper, so it falls to me.
2) It's not revenue generating, so I spend 2 hours doing it once a year when I need to since it doesn't improve the fundamentals of the business anywhere else.
3) I see an annual tax accountant to deal with it who doesn't look at any of the paperwork I've prepared either way.
I've seen multiple accountants and they all just want the easy shit. They want a W2 and maybe a few itemizations and to just stamp shit.
And if it's more complicated than that, they want $1000/mo retainer for their name PLUS hour for all the time they spend keeping QuickBooks or whatever clean.
So while you're bitching at this guy for ignoring some work and getting a 15k bill, he avoided a 75k+ expense over the last 5 years by leaving it alone.
He owes the taxes either way, plus the penalties, but it's actually coming out to a pretty similar expense here. I can't say I fault him.
I've yet to talk to an accountant who did a writeup or a simulation for me that didn't miss at least one MAJOR credit/deduction/mistake that actually really shifted things.
The last guy I had reviewed some previous tax returns I filed and said "Yea, these are filed correctly", without having looked at the corresponding financial records.
Honestly, a lot of small businesses would be GREAT if there was a financial and tax guru involved, but a lot of small businesses just don't have the ability to pay what they're going to charge for that kind of services.