How much do you pay to get your taxes done?

[Anonymous]

Turbo Tax and if we run into trouble FIL a CPA. One under a $100 the other a dinner.

[Anonymous]

2-w2s, married file separately with child, few investment properties.

$300 in VA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. It's all very easy now. You enter in your account details and it automatically pulls everything in from whatever bank you want (Merrill, boa, Schwab, whatever).

We have multiple properties, $20 to $30k of capital gains, foreign investments, an even some 1099 income to deal with. It handles it all easily.

One year I paid a firm to do it and compared turbotax to it - they were within 1 penny of each other, literally.

Since then I've never done the CPA route again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. It's all very easy now. You enter in your account details and it automatically pulls everything in from whatever bank you want (Merrill, boa, Schwab, whatever).

We have multiple properties, $20 to $30k of capital gains, foreign investments, an even some 1099 income to deal with. It handles it all easily.

One year I paid a firm to do it and compared turbotax to it - they were within 1 penny of each other, literally.

Since then I've never done the CPA route again.

Exactly what we did. We compared the results we got with Turbo Tax with the CPA's results for two years. One year they were identical. The next year there was a $17 difference. We haven't paid to have our taxes done since.

[Anonymous]

Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. Turbotax Deluxe (the 55 dollar one) has charitable donations and dividends, and you need to buy the next version (I believe it's 75 dollars) for capital gains. It's actually pretty easy, and a lot cheaper than a CPA. You can import all your tax documents for dividends from your financial institution, and the prompts are pretty straight foreword. It takes time, and the ability to have patience wading through forms and receipts, but if you don't want to shell out over 300 dollars, it does the job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. Turbotax Deluxe (the 55 dollar one) has charitable donations and dividends, and you need to buy the next version (I believe it's 75 dollars) for capital gains. It's actually pretty easy, and a lot cheaper than a CPA. You can import all your tax documents for dividends from your financial institution, and the prompts are pretty straight foreword. It takes time, and the ability to have patience wading through forms and receipts, but if you don't want to shell out over 300 dollars, it does the job.

This is the issue for me. Filing the taxes, even using Turbo Tax, takes time that I don't have. I used Turbo tax for many years, now I send them out. Turbo tax had a bug in its dependent care calculation at one time, but I guess that's been fixed. This is all a question of how much your own time is worth and how much you don't mind spending a day on your taxes. You cannot escape the need to collect all the forms of course, and subtract $75 from the CPA's fee before making your comparison. When I have more time I'll do them myself.

[Anonymous]

$100 for a simple return.

[Anonymous]

Turbo tax. Unless you have something crazy with several states of need planning help, you are just throwing money in the toilet and wasting your time doing anything else.

[Anonymous]

What happens when the irs asks erroneously for more money or overlooks forms. This happens to me every year and my accountant will immediately respond with items I need. Once you get to a certain income, business and rentals turbo tax may work but there is more to taxes than just filling. The irs definitely harasses you one you get to s certain threshold.

[Anonymous]

800

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. Turbotax Deluxe (the 55 dollar one) has charitable donations and dividends, and you need to buy the next version (I believe it's 75 dollars) for capital gains. It's actually pretty easy, and a lot cheaper than a CPA. You can import all your tax documents for dividends from your financial institution, and the prompts are pretty straight foreword. It takes time, and the ability to have patience wading through forms and receipts, but if you don't want to shell out over 300 dollars, it does the job.

This is the issue for me. Filing the taxes, even using Turbo Tax, takes time that I don't have. I used Turbo tax for many years, now I send them out. Turbo tax had a bug in its dependent care calculation at one time, but I guess that's been fixed. This is all a question of how much your own time is worth and how much you don't mind spending a day on your taxes. You cannot escape the need to collect all the forms of course, and subtract $75 from the CPA's fee before making your comparison. When I have more time I'll do them myself.

It's never taken me more than a couple of hours. The most time consuming stuff is pulling all the papers, which you have to do for the CPA, anyway. Take a folder. Call it "taxes 2014" If at any point this year something comes in (charity receipt, end of year statement), stick it in the folder. It might take a little longer the first year because you have to input SSNs, account numbers, etc, but after that it just pulls it all forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. It's all very easy now. You enter in your account details and it automatically pulls everything in from whatever bank you want (Merrill, boa, Schwab, whatever).

We have multiple properties, $20 to $30k of capital gains, foreign investments, an even some 1099 income to deal with. It handles it all easily.

One year I paid a firm to do it and compared turbotax to it - they were within 1 penny of each other, literally.

Since then I've never done the CPA route again.

We've used Turbo Tax for the past 12 years but now have some retirement income that's already taxed, plus earned income that's taxed at a different rate. Can Turbo Tax factor in those differences?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes. It's all very easy now. You enter in your account details and it automatically pulls everything in from whatever bank you want (Merrill, boa, Schwab, whatever).

We have multiple properties, $20 to $30k of capital gains, foreign investments, an even some 1099 income to deal with. It handles it all easily.

One year I paid a firm to do it and compared turbotax to it - they were within 1 penny of each other, literally.

Since then I've never done the CPA route again.

We've used Turbo Tax for the past 12 years but now have some retirement income that's already taxed, plus earned income that's taxed at a different rate. Can Turbo Tax factor in those differences?

Dude, you have fricking carry paying out and won't use a CPA?

[Anonymous]

OP if it's so simple, then just do them yourselves. Or pay $75 for Turbo Tax. I will never understand the people who have simple taxes and still pay $300+ for someone to do it of them. Are you stupid? Because seriously, last year I had a complicated case (two states) and double checked my turbo tax returns by hand just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and it was not hard. At all. And we are a little more complicated than you, in that we invest a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do people who use turbotax have stuff like capital gains and dividends and charitable donations? I'm afraid I'd screw it up.

Yes, it's SO easy. They walk you through it step by step. And for capital gains and dividends, all the info you need is on your 1099. Turbo Tax will even auto download from places like fidelity, chase, schwab, etc...