What I learned in 1040 class.

[HFWR]

Do my own, but with only a few cap gains, divs, and a mort ded, it's a no brainer... :

 

[MJ]

Our returns and schedules last year were about an inch thick. I dread imputing all the data for the first time. I also hate dealing with the AMT mess.

With the little that I input, I get about a 1/3 of an inch of paper for my Fed/state returns. TT reuses the information you entered to automatically generate the additional paperwork.

 

[Nords]

Another reason to file online, including electronic payments, from News Of The Weird:

Latest Truck Spills
(1) "Hundreds" of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, onto Vineville Avenue in Macon, Ga., in September, when a delivery truck overturned to avoid a dog. 
(2) 30,000 pieces of mail to IRS (mostly estimated-tax payments), into San Francisco Bay in September when a truck was involved in a collision on the San
Mateo Bridge. 
(3) 35 tons of cooking oil, onto already-icy Interstate 65 near Lowell, Ind., in November when a tanker overturned. 
(4) And just hours apart in June in Ohio, one truck overturned, spilling 19 tons of stick dynamite on Interstate 70 near Summerford (forcing nearby evacuations) and another carrying 16 tons of toilets overturned on Interstate 275 near Sharonville.

 

[JB]

Neither is that $400 tax preparer. Especially when the first piece of paper they hand you is an extension request so that they can clear out their customer backlog on your time do some more research on your itemized deductions. It feels too much like handing your credit card to a car dealer and saying "Pick me a winner, OK?"

I've always done my own taxes since my father sat me down with my first paycheck to show me how to get all those taxes back (some of them, anyway). TurboTax has become a godsend to automation & tweaking, although that's no substitute for looking up the pubs.

No one can become as much of an expert on your tax situation as you can. Your CPA isn't in the business to teach you either. I don't slaughter my own beef or raise my own chickens, but I figure that it's well worth my time to learn how to do our taxes and thus also learn how to avoid incurring them in the first place.

Right-on. I've always done my own taxes except for one year. That year I was very busy and had some complicated tax issues. The preparer told me that we had to file an extension, and that it would cost X. IRS sent me a bill for 10X. Then I had to redo the tax return because the accountant made some mistakes which would have cost me thousands. I wrote a letter to the IRS explaining the situation and they forgave the $4000 penalty!

 

[ladelfina]

uncle drz (and others)..
In what areas have you experienced the tax software to "go off??

Used to do my own, then with a small business gave the job to the business's tax preparer. It went OK for a few years and was quite a relief to see his nice little presentation folder.. "just sign here!" Then in 2003, his bills had gotten up to $800! One of his assistants tried to pin an extra $250,000 of CG on our house sale (gee, forgot about that extra marital exemption...), so as of then I started back up doing 'em myself.

I e-filed for the first time last year (and I HATED having to pay for it.. so unfair since we are saving the IRS work inputting it!). That's because living overseas I didn't want to worry about mailing/proof of mailing/traceability.. I was glad to see the electronic receipts w/in a day or two, and my refunds direct to my bank account w/in the week! That was worth something, since I didn't have to pay for registered mail and so forth.

The advantage of the software is also in being able to play around with different scenarios, esp. WRT IRA contributions before the filing deadline. P.S., pay close attention to this.. I got kinda screwed out of one year's Roth contributions because I assumed I had 'til my filing deadline (August) which was indeed the case for the SAR-SEP I have. The Roth, however, is April 15 or bust!  Why? Why? Why? This is the kind of needless complication that needs to be purged from the tax system, if nothing else.

 

[uncledrz]

l-fina
Without going back over the actual returns, I'll not be able to be specifc.
I do remember a few years ago Tax Cut was confusing in the instructions regarding the pension plan and had I not known the specifics it could have caused incorrect reporting (deductible to company vs individual). I also remeber that in asking for deductions, the interview only follows the form, whereas many valid business expenses are not specified on the form so if you rely only on the interview you may miss some valid expenses.
In general, the programs do a good job, but I would suggest reading or at least skimming the IRS publications and not rely completely on the computer programs.
Nonetheless, I use them because they do a good job, and the calculations part alone, IMO, makes it worth the money.

 

[brewer12345]

Or the $800 preparer as in our case, who also couldn't get our taxes done on time. 

I might give a TT trial run against an accountant for this year.  Our returns and schedules last year were about an inch thick.     I dread imputing all the data for the first time.  I also hate dealing with the AMT mess. 

Martha, in the years I was subject to AMT (sure to be coming back for me), I can't imagine how I would have gotten through the AMT disaster if I hadn't had TT.

 

[MJ]

I e-filed for the first time last year (and I HATED having to pay for it.. so unfair since we are saving the IRS work inputting it!).

Although, I don't take advantage on it, TT includes (as of 2004) 1 free e-filing.

MJ

 

[Nords]

Nonetheless, I use them because they do a good job, and the calculations part alone, IMO, makes it worth the money.

If TurboTax has a serious calculation/algorithm/legal error that didn't get corrected before April then I've never heard of it. There are at least as many Intuit-bashers out there as Microsoft-bashers, so I suspect the Intuit folks are extra terrified careful & conservative at their software.

Heck, I whine every time I have to do a six-page schedule D on the computer. I'd never be able to return to doing two federal returns (plus an AMT calculation) and two state returns with paper & pencil.

 

[ladelfina]

MJ, I vaguely remember that, but I seem to remember also that because I filed with extensions, I'd missed the deadline to get the rebate. Intuit really sux.. they love to send everyone through lots and lots of rebate hoops, and there is frequently some kind of catch.

Dunno why... I haven't come across any other software companies that bother to do this.

 

[Nords]

Dunno why... I haven't come across any other software companies that bother to do this.

Because of their arcane rebate policies and poor disclosure, I don't hesitate to complain vociferously at the slightest provocation. Persistence has even succeeded beyond the refund deadline.

When their customer-service people realize that they're dealing with an ER who could spend all day debating the situation on their time, they cave in and "cheerfully" refund the purchase. It's worked with Quickbooks, Quicken, & TurboTax so I'm beginning to believe that it's the company policy.

Sure, it's a heckuva way to pass the time, but I figure that if a customer complaint about the software or the rebate system is linked to a refund then they'll pay more attention to improving it.

 

[ladelfina]

Nords, that's a great tip.. persistence does pay off, but..

1.) from where I am it's a toll call (800 numbers don't work overseas, thus my calls might easily supercede the rebate) and

2.) even if it weren't, spending even a half-hour with a series of customer "service" people on the phone is not worth $8.95 to me at this point. I'm trying to get away from all that.

Kudos to you, though. One of my old business partners was similar. He even enjoyed signing up for those "free" trips where they try to sell you timeshares because he had no problem fending them off and actually had fun messing with their heads. Me, I'd rather stick a fork in my eye...

---
On the Intuit side of things, they are a straaange company indeed. The one drawback of using a Mac is their horrible implementation (though that is too kind a word) of Quicken. I sometimes visit the Intuit forums and you would not believe the insanity there. People ranting and raving about bugs and so forth, and then every once in a blue moon a Quicken employee will show up with a "think happy thoughts"-type thread like, "What do you like best about being able to customize Quicken?" which sets me right off because G*D*-it!! I can't customize it.. switch between "banking" and "investments" and you lose your prefs.. Idiots!

Don't get me started on their broken capital gains, broken spin-offs, etc. etc.

 

[brewer12345]

If TurboTax has a serious calculation/algorithm/legal error that didn't get corrected before April then I've never heard of it.  There are at least as many Intuit-bashers out there as Microsoft-bashers, so I suspect the Intuit folks are extra terrified careful & conservative at their software.

Heck, I whine every time I have to do a six-page schedule D on the computer.  I'd never be able to return to doing two federal returns (plus an AMT calculation) and two state returns with paper & pencil. 

TT Federal is fine. Sometimes the state products have glitches in my experience. They are never big, but they do require attention and sometimes manual fixes.

While I like TT, Intuit sucks donkey balls. I actually went as far as switching to TaxCut (decidedly inferior, IMO) one year when Intuit went to their evil mandatory tracking install that messed up gawd knows how many machines just so those buggers could try for a few extra sales.

 

[yakers]

Interesting thread twist, I cannot restrain myself.....must vent....while I am no fan of Microsoft, I really fume at Intuit. IMHO they have some of the best products available but their so called support is, well, have fun thinking of appropriate terms...(no Intelligent Design in their service dept? )

I am happy to hear someone can hold their own with Intuit, way to go Nords

 

[REWahoo]

I have a long-standing dislike of Quicken, TurdboTax, and Intuit. Like others, I’ve found their products flawed and their customer service worthless as teats on a boar hog very poor.

My attitude towards Intuit was further degraded by my experience with them while bidding to be a supplier. Makes me wonder if Walmart’s legendary procurement arm recruited heavily from Intuit. At any rate, my attitude towards their entire product line is that you should open the lid on the toilet and throw them intuit.

 

[haha]

Intuit stinks in every imaginable way, but so does their competition, so I use the product.

Hate it but use it.

Ha

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I do my own taxes, have used turbo tax since it came out, some old 1-2-3 spreadsheets with autocalc before that. Paper forms by hand before that. I used h&r block once when I was in my late teens and first made something resembling real money. I was a bit uncomfortable with the preparer, as she was doing all sorts of things that I thought were borderline that werent really saving me money. I havent used anything other than turbotax simply because i almost always get it for free after rebates and i'm more comfortable with it rolling up last years turbotax data into this year.

Up until a few years ago taxes were a little painful. A had stacks of individual stock trade confirmations from several different brokerages, stock options, employee stock purchases, and constantly flirted with underpayment penalties and AMT. I can state with great authority that writing a six figure check to the IRS is one of the most painful things you can ever do in your life.

The last few years have been a lot simpler. All mutual funds at vanguard made that a little easier, excepting my mistake last year of using the Short Term Bond Fund as a money market and discovering that every redemption/purchase/reinvested dividend ran into the wash sale rule and required me to parcel out which shares were sold and at what individual purchase/sale amount. That took me about 4 hours. The rest of it took about an hour total.

Should be better this year - closer to the hour than the 5 hours. So three days of being tax batty to five hours to one. Still, I've learned a lot about taxes and incorporated that learning into changed financial planning. And I cant for the life of me imagine it'd save me anything to try to shove all this %$#%$@ into a shoebox and drop it on someone else.

I've never used electronic filing for most of the reasons stated above. No paper trail, and it costs money to save the IRS work...I cant figure that out either! I know you can get products that do free fed and state e-file, but I havent seen one that does both from the same input.

Martha - a lot of the "inputting" is fairly painless. Many payroll companies, investing outfits and banks offer auto downloading of the detailed financial info and auto create the 1099's within turbotax. There's a tremendous amount of handholding, examples, and links directly to the tax code. Without hundreds of individual stock sales, ISO/ESOP's and the stuff that you probably dont have to work out, it'll probably take you a few hours to wrap up once you have all your paperwork in a pile.

To get your tax s/w free after rebate, just wait until the office supply stores (staples, officemax, officedepot) start offering 'bundles' where you buy turbotax, get a rebate on that, then get a bunch of products (state, quicken, virus, etc) free after rebates. You buy about $75-100 worth of stuff, apply one of the readily available staples/officemax/depot $15 off $75 or $20 off $100 coupons, send in all your rebates, and end up with all the software for free. Note that the virus s/w is usually only free if you already own an older copy and are upgrading, but after that first year, the updates are free.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

Intuit stinks in every imaginable way,.

Ha

It's probably due to all the whale blubber they consume.

JG

 

[LOL!]

My peeve with TurboTax is really with BestBuy which does not sell the Basic version here in Texas. They sell the Deluxe version which comes with one free State income tax software, but ... Texas has no state income tax to speak of. But I do get all the rebates from Intuit and BestBuy when I buy the software.

 

[WanderALot]

Another reason to file online, including electronic payments, from News Of The Weird:
(2) 30,000 pieces of mail to IRS (mostly estimated-tax payments), into San Francisco Bay in September when a truck was involved in a collision on the San
Mateo Bridge.

I got bit by that. I sent in my Sept. ES payment and it never got cashed. Being the conscientious
tax payer that I am [translated "I didn''t want the check to bounce if the IRS decided to cash the
check a year later after I had forgotten about it"] I called them up and asked what the deal was.
The lady was polite and said that they hadn't received it and said that I should have received
a letter explaining the truck collision etc. I told her I had received no such letter to which she
responded: "You know, several people have called and said that they got the letter even though
their checks were cashed and apparently a lot of people haven't received the letter when they
should have". Now, in this day and age, how hard is it to get this right?!?!

 

[Mr._johngalt]

I got bit by that.  I sent in my Sept. ES payment and it never got cashed.  Being the conscientious
tax payer that I am [translated "I didn''t want the check to bounce if the IRS decided to cash the
check a year later after I had forgotten about it"]  I called them up and asked what the deal was.
The lady was polite and said that they hadn't received it and said that I should have received
a letter explaining the truck collision etc.  I told her I had received no such letter to which she
responded:  "You know, several people have called and said that they got the letter even though
their checks were cashed and apparently a lot of people haven't received the letter when they
should have".  Now,  in this day and age, how hard is it to get this right?!?!

My Daddy and my mechanic have opined that the more complicated you
make a car, the more things will go wrong. We "closet Luddites"
believe this is also true of the universe in general.

JG

 

[LOL!]

My Daddy and my mechanic have opined that the more complicated you
make a  car, the more things will go wrong.  We "closet Luddites"
believe this is also true of the universe in general.

JG

You have simply restated the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You didn't know that you were a physicist, did you?

 

[Mr._johngalt]

You have simply restated the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  You didn't know that you were a physicist, did you?

My talents are quite vast. I would like to say that I even surprise
myself, but in truth that never happens.

JG