When is local better? Perhaps the only time that we might recommend a local tax professional over Washington Tax Services is when a TON of bookkeeping (and I mean a ton of bookkeeping) is going to be necessary to make Profit and Loss Statements. For the record, we have taken on many cases like this: it just requires shipments via UPS, usually.
However, local can often be worst especially when "local" is only local in name. A company that claims to have local branches online or advertises locally on TV can be deceiving. In actuality, their company only has temporary offices in strip malls around the country staffed by SALESPEOPLE while their corporate offices are in South Carolina. There are numerous examples of these fly-by-night offices that are no longer in existence, stranding hundreds of customers.
