I’ve done my own taxes all of my adult life. I’ve used TurboTax online filing since 2006. Before that, I always just filed a 1040EZ (with the exception of one year when I filed a 1040a).
The difference this year is that I got married. We’re effectively a one-income household, as my wife is disabled and doesn’t work, though she does receive some small SSI Disability benefits. I’m aware that there is some sort of tax break for getting married, but I’m not sure how that works. I suspect I’ll also qualify for an Earned-Income Credit, given that the size of my household has doubled (i.e. I have a dependent now) while income has not increased significantly. Not to mention that I have no idea what effect my wife’s benefits have for tax purposes.
TurboTax, in the past, has done a pretty good job of asking me questions and walking me through everything, but filing my taxes has always been really simple. I mean, I was a single male, had no children anywhere, have never had any major medical expenses, no investment income, no inheritances yet, etc. So doing my taxes has always been mostly, “here’s what my job(s) paid me, here’s how much I owe on that, here’s how much was withheld, here’s how much to refund me”.
I’ve been happy and comfortable with TurboTax for years, but … given the major changes in my life this year, I’m thinking that I should work directly with a human tax preparer who can go over everything with me in detail.
Any decent tax program will handle this very easily. Your situation is all ordinary stuff, nothing complex. I use Tax Act, an online program. The tax program will put her SSI where it belongs (it is not earned income) and check for any possible credits. The exemptions and deductions are automatic and will get filled in when you select “married filing jointly”.
It will use any deductions you have (property taxes, donations and gifts, mortgage interest paid, etc) and tell you what is the best method to file.
The “tax break” for married filing jointly is automatic from the tax tables. Basically it will take your “income before taxes” from the proper line and just look it up in the tax tables.
At the end it should ask you if you want to compare filing joint and separate (at least TaxAct does). Take a look at the comparison and decide how to file.
You may find that you will want to tweak your withholding for the next year to generate the proper refund (or whatever you prefer).
I’ve seen plenty of people check the wrong box in TurboTax and miss important credits. A tax preparer like me would look at your situation and intuitively come up with a list of things we expect to see at the end. If we miss a checkbox, we see unexpected results and go hunting for our mistake. If you don’t know what to expect, you lose the ability to catch simple mistakes.
It’s certainly not a tax return that is inherently too hard for you to do yourself. It’s mostly an issue of making sure there are no mistakes or omissions.
Assuming that your wife has filed tax returns in the past, look at her returns to see how the SSI benefits were handled and any credits or deductions she was able to take. Then use Turbotax and check that the forms it generates handle the SSI benefits the same way and include the credits or deductions. I do this with our taxes every year as a final check to make sure I haven’t forgotten to account for something when entering the data in Turbotax.
It’s not a bad idea to run your taxes by a professional once in a while … they might find something you missed … typically things don’t change all that much year-to-year so you walk away with a “blueprint” of how to fill out your taxes for the following years …