(feel free to move if this is not the right channel)... Does anyone have a recommendation for a yashar accountant, particularly one that is experienced with handling a kollel stipend? (To be clear, NOT looking to start a conversation here on how it should be handled, I will leave that up to the accountant 🙂 )

Define handling?

Knows what to do with it re: filing ... Some accountants I have used in the past have not been sure (perhaps the first time they've seen that sort of thing?) and kind of asked me what to do with it and I don't really want to be in that position

My only recommendation is to look a little deeper into what an accountants job is vs is not. An accountant's professional responsibility is to file the document based on what you tell them. Asking what you want him to do with it is their job. CPAs are not tax strategists or tax lawyers, nor do they defend the position if there is something legally wrong with your filing. Their defense is clear, "we filed based off what we were told". That means it's your responsibility to know what to do our have a financial planner or tax strategist working with your accountant to make the decision. We see issues around this constantly with our members! So if you are looking for an accountant so you can give them the responsibility, unfortunately, that isn't how it works unless they are a financial planner that also happens to offer free accounting services as part of their offering.

I disagree, my accountant sits with me and crafts tax strategies that work for me and I know he does it for all his other clients as well. A good accountant isn't just a human turbo tax, it's one that will work with you to optimize your tax liabilities in a legal way. Happy to share his contact info.

I'm talking about what their legal responsibility is, not what they end up doing. I agree that they end up doing tax optimizations.

Financial planners don't have any legal responsibilities either

I'm talking about tax lawyers.

I have never heard of a tax lawyer being used to optimize income tax

Not the thread to debate this. Lots of thoughts. Don't want to derail from the question. At this point people should share their recommendations.

They are called after the fact to fix things up

Disagree.

We can agree to disagree, I think a strong and savvy accountant who operates in the frum community is the way to go.

I completely agree. My point is just not to trust them blindly and do your own research

I am actually quite interested in the back and forth in addition to getting a recommendation (which I still very much am, as I had other issues with past accountants having nothing to do with how they categorized my income 😝)

This has a lot to do with how much you pay for your accountant, If you pay a flat fee then you will get a document in return. If you pay for advise, generally you will get that....

I'm commenting on what the responsibility is of the job role, not what services you could be provided.

Fair enough

@mysterious-tomato-10057 That's not accurate. Part of an accountant's job is to do due diligence, as required under IRS Circular 230 which is what governs tax return preparers. People tell me as a tax accountant all the time how they think something should be filed, and they're wrong. I follow the the IRC (Internal Revenue Code), not someone's opinion. Most accountants ARE tax strategists, and can help you defend a legal position if audited. Besides for the well known CPA designation, "accountant" covers EA (Enrolled Agents), AFSP (Annual Filing Season Program participants) and "unenrolled preparers". All those may or may not be knowledgeable about your specific needs and may or may not be responsible enough to be careful not to break laws. An accountant has responsibility to guide people to keep the law and strategize right. There are some accountants who don't try or know how to strategize at all, and they should be avoided. For very basic strategies, accountants generally don't charge extra and throw it in with the tax preparation. @gorgeous-night-309 As far as Kollel stipends are filed, generally they are filed as taxable scholarship income, which is not considered "earned income" for purposes of claiming a bigger child tax credit or earned income credit. Generally the yearly stipends are miniscule enough that they won't cause much more taxes overall, in any case. In rare cases, such as if the Kollel treats it differently and pays through an official salary and files a W-2 or equivalent in another country, it can be claimed as earned income. In some cases it can be classified as self employment, such as when tutoring is involved. Much of the famous mass IRS audits of 2010 of US citizens in Israel were a result of misclassified Kollel income, to put things lightly. There's a lot more depth to this, which is beyond the scope this comment. I'll just add one more thing, which is that if the accountant misclassifies income, the TAXPAYER is on the hook for penalties, as well as the accountant. Theoretically, if you were misled, and there was a criminal investigation, you could possibly get out of jail time with a good attorney.

@echoing-garage-78412 wow, thank you for the detailed response!