Live in the US. I’ve been doing our taxes with Turbo Tax for close to 10 years. I used to do them by hand on paper. Turbo Tax (and I’m guessing all the other tax software) takes you step by step by asking very simple, easy to understand questions. It takes me a couple of hours, if even that. We both have regular jobs, mortgage, student loan interest, IRA’s and some charitable contributions. Nothing too complicated.
US here. Hell, no. Too complicated. My holdings aren’t vast, but they are complex; trusts inherited from parents, trusts set up for the kids, weird property logistics, different rules for township, county, state, and federal tax computation, and more.
USA … I cycle my own books, so it’s really really easy just transferring the numbers from my income statement to the tax forms … the whole process takes about 20 to 25 hours, but the actual filling out the tax forms is less than an hour … the lesson is that if you do your proper accounting, taxes are much easier; what makes taxes difficult is when you’re doing your accounting with you tax forms, that can get a little insane …
I would have gotten better value to hire a CPA to do all this … but I kinda enjoy doing it myself … also helpful is that my state taxes are in sync with my Federal taxes, so the state tax forms start with the AGI and go from there …
I’m shocked at the father-in-law above … maybe time to talk to your spouse about that … if they are old enough to marry you, then it’s long past time to cut the apron strings …
You actually don’t need to spend $40. With TurboTax you don’t give them any money until you actually file. You can do all your taxes and see your total refund/payment on the screen without spending a dime. I actually do this with my State return. I let TT come up with the total and then decline to have them file it (thus avoiding paying for it) and then file for free on the state’s tax site. I keep the TT number in mind, and it’s always the same (or $10 off, because I think I’m missing something).
You would not see your actual tax paperwork in this instance. If you wanted to see the forms, you would have to pay. There is a way to pay w/o filing.
Then go over tham after filing.
This is 100% totally incorrect.
Look, first of all, it is very difficult to plan taxes so that you neither owe or are owed. Tax tables will make that pretty much impossible.
Now, sure, you can massage your withholding so that you either owe or are owed maybe $200. But the vast majority would much rather be owed $200 that have to write a check.
And what with Passbooks savings rates being negligible, getting a $1000 refund as a way of saving is not a bad idea at all.
Sure, if you consistently get a $10000 refund, maybe you should rethink. Maybe that is what you want, then sure. But ponder it.
I used to do them on paper and mail in the form, but 10 or so years ago there was one of those Bush-style tax rebates that required filling out an extra form to make sure you were reconciled correctly so I started using software to make sure I had all the forms (and a similar situation now, with an HSA). Using the software actually made it slightly more complicated as the software didn’t support Schedule C-EZ, so I had to actually classify my expenses for a regular schedule C.
This year I didn’t participate in the side gig so had a fairly simple return. Took about 10 minutes to fill out the forms in the software, efile, and got my pittance of a refund in two days.
See post #18
“This is 100% totally incorrect.”
100%? Totally?
Yep.
UK: When I was self-employed, I used an accountant (paid him c.$400 pa). He knew better than I did what I could reasonably expect to claim against taxes and what I could not, so his fees amply covered my savings in tax liability.
Now I’m employed, and my taxes are taken via my employer (for my salary) and my bank (for interest on my meagre savings), so I am no longer required to submit a tax form. If I did (because of more complex investments) then I’d do that myself.
It’s three years from when you filed the original return.
I did so for two returns several years ago when I realized I hadn’t deducted something I could have. The form is pretty simple.
I used to do my taxes on paper, then one year, after doing so, decided to put them into a software package to see if it could do better, and it did better. I figured out what the difference was, and then went through my past returns and found it there, too.
Now I pay the $15 or whatever for the software each year. It’s easier anyway, and well worth it for the next thing that they know about and I don’t.
I do. I make a middle-class income, but my financial life is very simple. No mortgage, minimal out-of-pocket medical, no kids, work for one company with employer health insurance and a 401K. No IRA. I MIGHT be able to save a little money if I saved every blessed receipt, but I just don’t think it’s worth it, especially now that the standard deduction for an individual has increased (albeit at the expense of the personal deduction).
I usually file the day I get my W2. I’ve had my refund since January 29.
I used tax prep software for many years, at first because it was cheap (this was back in the days when TurboTax was $19.99) and then for awhile around adopting the Firebug, our taxes got complicated.
But the complications have gone away, TurboTax has gotten expensive, and each 1040 has numbers in the same places as the previous years, just with slightly different amounts. So I’m back to doing them by hand. (OK, typing the numbers into a PDF of the1040. Potato, pohtato.)
It takes me several hours to do my taxes, but just like in the TurboTax days, most of that is pulling together the documentation.
Yeah, that’s kinda where we USED to be - damn it, we are not stupid, and we should be able to do this basic aspect of citizenship. But it got so confounding when we’d be trying to parse something, and NEITHER of could tell for certain what was required. Our investments are not overly complicated, but we do make them with assistance from an advisor. SO I often don’t know if investment XYZ with some unintelligible name requires one schedule or another.
And this from a guy whose day job for decades has involved interpreting and applying federal regulations and caselaw. :smack:
Also, doing the taxes is NOT something either of us enjoys. Once your income gets to a certain point, TurboTax isn’t all that cheap. We are fortunate to be at the point in our lives that if we can spend $150-200 to avoid 5 hrs of something we find VERY unpleasant, then that is money well spent.
Final point, I’m not looking to squeeze every cent out of every exemption, but I don’t want to overpay hundreds of $$$ because I missed something that should have been obvious, or trigger an audit/penalty or additional costs/efforts because I misinterpreted something.
I’m in the US and use a free online service to file mine every year. That might change if my finances get more complicated or I start owning property somewhere, but for now there’s nothing to consider except my income from a single full-time job. The service I use seems to do a fine job, and prompts me for information about a large number of things (various investments, dependents, education, housing improvements, etc.) that came in handy the year I was enrolled in school and handling a small loan.
My husband has a full-time job and owns a small business with a partner, so he handles his differently these days. The first year he went to H&R Block and they royally fucked up his taxes. After that he started using the same accountant as his business partner and it’s gone well since then. I don’t remember what they cost exactly, and we haven’t started anything for his taxes this year, but it’s somewhere around $200. So far it’s been worth it.
We use H&R Block. We used to use TurboTax until the year they decided to delete Schedule C from the Deluxe package, which pissed us off.
When my wife started writing we used a CPA for a few years to see what she could count as expenses against her income. But it cost more than the software, and getting the data ready took longer than entering it into software.
I did it by hand before software came out, and it was a nightmare, especially those long forms which came out to zero at the end, making the whole exercise pointless. I was cheap and did the state return by hand when that cost extra. Then one year I was unsure and did it on the computer, and found out my calculations had me overpaying like $500. Never again.
And irrelevant, too, since whether you are doing your own tax forms or have someone else do it, it’s way too late to be adjusting withholding in any case.
Not too late to make adjustments for next year.
I usually do but my tax situation is strange this year so I may hire an accountant. Probably take a stab at it myself first.
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Well, my wife does.
TurboTax all the way!
Our taxes are pretty straight forward, we don’t own a business, we don’t have investments, etc. Just take home pay and withholding by the employer.
Usually takes an hour or so.