How did you do your taxes this year?

[iamthewalrus_3]

@Lightray

I didn’t e-file, though; if they want to audit me, a human is welcome to do so, but I’m not so keen on having my return dumped into a computer to be autoflagged.

Unless you write very illegibly, your return is dumped into a computer just like everyone else’s. It just takes a scanner to get there.

[jellyblue]

Accountant. I could live in a box in the middle of the street and I’d still pay someone to do my taxes…

[Voyager]

@gazpacho

28 hours seems a little long. But I probably spend about 20 hours total. But I will say this you are not someone who has sold employee stock options or employee stock purchase plan shares. For reasons I do not understand, and which I bitch about every year, my brokerage and employer cannot tell me the cost basis for the stock I sell. They can tell me some other numbers which don’t seem to be useful except for determining the cost basis but they don’t tell me the cost basis. My employer to determine how much income to report has to know the cost basis. Why don’t they tell me what it is. It is madding and a big pain in the butt every year to determine the real number.

Options should be a cinch, especially if you sell them right away. I hear you about ESPP shares, though. The sales stuff has nothing about cost basis - luckily my company has a tool that lets you print your history, including sales, when it goes over to long term capital gains, and purchases. It’s still a pain when you sell a couple of lots, but I’d be a dead duck without that printout.

[Liberal]

Cpa

[scotandrsn]

My wife and I used to each do our own taxes by hand before we got married and bought a house. Then we went to an enrolled agent for two years. The first year was OK, I suppose, but the next, he failed to enter a new credit that applied to my wife. It wasn’t even that he thought it wasn’t applicable, it was that he had no idea it even existed, and acted like I was crazy when I mentioned it. His DOS-interface software didn’t even have a line for it. My esteem for the credentials of Enrolled Agents plummeted that day. These guys are supposed to attend training regularly and be very up-to-date on new developments. Clearly that’s not stringently enforced.

He also insisted that my then live-in brother-in-law qualified as a dependent, even though he clearly failed one of the very precisely defined qualifications. Sure enough, we got a letter from the IRS demanding an amended return. We called our EA with the news. His response? “Challenge it!” Yeah, fuck you, buddy, I don’t need that kind of misery at your behest. At least we got to apply the new credit on our amended return, which reduced our subsequent check to a mere extra $800, including penalties.

It’s been TurboTax Deluxe ever since, which is great now that their It’sDeductible software is bundled with it, for the mountain of stuff we seem to find ourselves taking to Goodwill each year.

[August_West]

"How did you do your taxes this year? "

With my jaw clenched and drunk enough to numb the pain