Roth IRA tax help needed!

[target2019]

The structured interview is not enough. There should be a checklist of the questions and items you need. I see this online for turbotax, as a pdf download.

 

[Buckeye]

Putting myself at risk of being characterized as an old codger, I would go so far as to recommend doing an educational run of one year's return with a pencil and paper (maybe before turning to a program for filing for that year). If you don't have a good working knowledge of the Code and Regs pertinent to your situation, the software packages are a bit of a black box--and I'm guessing particularly so if you do the so-called "interview" mode.

I recently had a similar conversation with late-20s Son and his S.O., both talented at math even for S.V. engineers. They did not understand standard deductions and how that played with itemized deductions; always just did the software. (Now, they are investigating implications of MFJ for two high CA incomes--fun times!)

OK, you can play on my lawn now.

Yes, definitely the best option but I'm afraid we would lose OP if we asked him to do this!

Another option is to do the return via interview and have it as a cheat sheet while attempting pencil and paper with a blank printed form. He could go to the IRS website and have the line by line instructions (Pub 17) open on his computer screen. If he got stuck, he could go to the finished form and see what the 'correct' answer was and hopefully back into how it got onto the line.

Also, OP might already have his 2015 form done by his preparer and he could compare that to what he generates via the software/interview.