HFWR
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Do my own, but with only a few cap gains, divs, and a mort ded, it's a no brainer... :
Martha said: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.
Nords said: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.
Martha said: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.
ladelfina said: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!).
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.uncledrz said:Nonetheless, I use them because they do a good job, and the calculations part alone, IMO, makes it worth the money.
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.ladelfina said:Dunno why... I haven't come across any other software companies that bother to do this.
Nords said: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.
HaHa said:Intuit stinks in every imaginable way,.
Ha
Nords said: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.
WanderALot said: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?!?!
MRGALT2U said: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! said:You have simply restated the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You didn't know that you were a physicist, did you?