[GA] Tax preparer is acting strangely

Hi r/legaladvice,

I have a tax issue I'm hoping someone can offer some advice on. My wife and I live in Georgia. Last year we got married and bought a house, so for the first time in my life I decided to hire a tax preparer instead of doing it myself. Before I could select one, my wife decided to use a guy recommended by a friend of hers.

I trusted this recommendation throughout the process and gave this guy all the tax information we needed. He then told us we'd be getting a fairly significant federal return and a small state return and e-mailed us a PDF of what we needed to sign before it could be submitted. I found what looked to be a few errors, and he corrected them and everything seemed okay. However, as tax day approached I was not hearing anything from him. I did more research into him and his firm (something I know I should have done immediately). Turns out his "firm" is just him, and it's registered to what appears to be a PO box in Gainesville, FL. I checked the IRS directory of registered tax preparers and could not find him. I did, however, find him on https://www.ptindirectory.com, but I don't know if that's at all legitimate.

The guy has a website with his picture, phone number, and linked in profile all available, and he was personally recommended by a friend, so I don't think he's trying to scam us or steal our identities, but I do have serious doubts about his knowledge and ability.

As tax day approached he told us he had been in a bad car accident. He didn't have a car anymore and had to get some MRI or CT scans done and stuff like that. I reached out to him again the day before tax day. He told us he needed to "pick himself up" and "stop letting the way he had been treated [by the insurance companies] get to him". He also assured us there would be no violation or penalty for filing late because we didn't owe any money. A google search seems to verify that is accurate as best I can tell.

My concern is that I no longer trust this guy. He's been late, has made errors, and has all of our financial information. I want to go to an actual professional, but I can't even get verification of if this guy has submitted our taxes for us or not. I don't want to submit two conflicting tax returns and end up getting audited.

Can anyone offer advice on how I can make sure that our taxes have been filed? I've been thinking to let this guy submit it (if he hasn't already) and then just file a corrected tax return once we're completely done with him. I'm willing to pay a good bit just for the peace of mind that our identities are safe and our taxes are accurate, because this has been keeping me up at night for two months now.

Thanks in advance.