[ul]
[li]The old-fashioned way-- paper forms, a pen and a calculator[/li][li]Online (e.g. Turbotax.com)[/li][li]Tax software out of the box (TurboTax, Tax Cut, etc.)[/li][li]Tax preparation service (H&R Block, Jackson-Hewett, etc.)[/li][li]CPA[/li][li]Other[/li][/ul]
I used Turbotax.com and have been since 2001. Before that I went to H&R Block from 1995 through 2000, and in the early days of my employment when I had just one job and no loans, investments or other financial complications, I did it myself,using the 1040EZ form.
If you still do it the old-fashioned way (or know someone who does), what are your reasons? What have been your experiences with using a tax preparation service?
We had the AARP Undertrained But Free guy do them first. He said we owed $850. Then we took it to Mr. Messy Office and paid $60 to find out we only owe $87. We’re happy as hell to pay him.
H&R Block agent. She was extremely helpful (if a little intimidating – I’m pretty sure she poofed into existence behind me when I was talking to the front desk to drop off a tax paper that I’d forgotten to include in the stack, and insisted on sitting down to finish off my taxes Right Now). Made things much less excruciating for me, and I finished early.
I used H&R Block at first, but then was too cheap to do the actual filing that way. So I copied down the numbers and was planning to enter them into my Federal and State forms manually.
Then I discovered I’d missed a big credit – when we cashed in my dh’s retirement account, we used the proceeds to buy our first house. Each person can exclude the first $10k from the early withdrawal penalty. The penalty is automatically deducted, so now we’re getting $1000 back (and I’ll be re-filing last year’s return, because we cashed in MY retirement account at the end of 2005 for the same reason, and bought our first house within 120 days).
I was disappointed the software didn’t catch that – all those y/n questions, it wouldn’t kill them to add some more.
H&R Block’s website also didn’t have an entry for the $60 telephone excise tax deduction, AFAIK.
TaxAct.com for federal, the official one for state, and paper for local. I was happy with TaxAct – first time I’ve used it, but I’ll do it again next year.
On paper, with a pen. I even added up the numbers without a calculator.
But only because the ones I did last year in wolf’s blood smeared on bark caused a delay in receiving my return. I did still slaughter the traditional chicken as a sacrifice to the tax gods, though.
My bank was offering TurboTax online for free, including the e-filing. I will never do that again. For some reason, my itemized deductions were $8000 higher than they were last year. Nice, but why should that be? The online version wouldn’t let me print before filing (which I didn’t want to do until I was confident that I hadn’t entered something wrong), nor would it let me preview my Schedule A, or allow me any other way of obtaining a breakdown of my itemized deductions.
After a half-hour of back-and-forth with the online help in India, the guy told me that the online version was an inferior product compared to the disc-in-the-box version. (I’d figured that out, but thanks for the confirmation.)
Eventually I went to the store, bought the TurboTax Basic disc (which is what I’ve usually used in the past), downloaded the data I’d entered into the online version into the desktop TurboTax, and I could see where the $8000 was coming from. I used the free e-file of the online version, but that’s all I’ll use it for if my bank offers it again next year.
For my state return, I used Maryland’s free online tax prep and e-file software, like I’ve done for the past several years. Kudos to Maryland.
I used TaxAct for my Federal return last year, because I had access to a free download for some reason. It was an unusually complicated tax year for me, but their software worked great.
On paper on the 1040-EZ form. I used to use TeleFile but had to send it in this year. Received direct deposit. State taxes on the state form, on paper, and received a paper check.
I did them online with H&R Block’s free-file, just like I did last year. This year, I went direct deposit with the refund, which I’ll always do from now on.
With the CD version of Quicktax; same as I’ve done for at least five years now. I keep thinking each year that I should try one of the cheaper tax programs, but I still end up getting Quicktax.