How accurate is Turbo Tax?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's perfect for our two W-2s and a 1099-DIV from Vanguard, some scattered charitable contributions, and property taxes. It's unclear whether I'm supposed to be deducting VA's car taxes, but I do it, anyway.

Umm no. You're not supposed to!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have an accountant but I have entered everything into turbo tax just to get a feel for what we might owe since last year we owed a few thousand. We had a few changes this year and it has us getting a $2,000 ish refund. Turned in everything today and waiting to hear from the accountant. I don't want to get too excited about getting a refund; is Turbo Tax accurate? Anyone compared to an accountant?

We've been using TT for about 8 years. This is the first year I have threatened to never use them again.

Over the years our income and financial situation has gone from simple to now somewhat less so. We now own investment real estate and DH is also now getting stock awards.

We were literally tearing our hair out and raising our voices at each the other night because TT kept telling us that we owed $31K in taxes due to stock awards that had vested, and sold. Thing is - we had already paid the taxes on these RSU's to the tune of 45% but TT kept trying to force us into a double-taxation situation. I literally had to dig around on Google to figure out what the heck we were dong wrong. One would think that TT would would have noticed that something was wrong also, instead I found myself on Bogleheads at 4am getting advise from others who also went through this same exact issue when using TT. I tried using TT's Help function and while it "sort of" addressed our issue it didn't even come close to walking us through how to correct the problem. Had it not been for that one discussion on Bogleheads we'd still be tearing our hair out.

I would say that TT is perfect for those who 1) have uncomplicated returns 2) or, have the patience to do a lot of their own research and footwork especially when it comes to entering in all of your income.

To be fair, that problem is caused by the IRS changing requirements for how basis for RSUs need to be reported, not by TT. I think TT makes it fairly easy to correct the basis, but of course you do need to know that basis needs to be corrected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's perfect for our two W-2s and a 1099-DIV from Vanguard, some scattered charitable contributions, and property taxes. It's unclear whether I'm supposed to be deducting VA's car taxes, but I do it, anyway.

Umm no. You're not supposed to!!!

PP you are wrong. Yes, Virginia's personal property tax on vehicles (aka the car tax) can be taken as a deduction. See: https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2708927

[Anonymous]

Colleague used an accountant and the accountant entered the data per 1099, showing the cost basis of RSU as 0. He was looking at the wrong field. I used Turbotax, imported the 1099 using Turbotax and got the right cost basis. Like one of the PP mentioned, accountant can only be as accurate as how he entered the data into his software. Turbotax can only be as accurate as how you answer the questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Turbotax is 100% accurate for the questions asked and answered correctly. In complicated or unusual situations it may miss things, eg if you are a G4 visa holder married to an American who sold property in your home country...

I am a G4 married to an American and we do Turbotax, works beautifully. The only thing I do manually is FATCA disclosures and attach them to the paper return.