What is a normal amount to pay to a tax service?

[Anonymous]

Those who are paying flesh-and-blood people over using Turbo Tax: Is the key saving time? Or do you find / suspect the preparer is able to give advice or save money?

We have always used turbo tax, but due to freelance writing income and beginning to invest, our taxes did get more complicated. Curious if there is monetary benefit in having someone take a look at our returns, or if reading the articles carefully is already covering our bases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those who are paying flesh-and-blood people over using Turbo Tax: Is the key saving time? Or do you find / suspect the preparer is able to give advice or save money?

We have always used turbo tax, but due to freelance writing income and beginning to invest, our taxes did get more complicated. Curious if there is monetary benefit in having someone take a look at our returns, or if reading the articles carefully is already covering our bases.

I'm the PP who switched from an accountant to TurboTax. I actually owed less taxes after I made the switch to TurboTax so I don't think there was any value add from my accountant at all. Couple that with the fact that TT was $500-$600 less than his fees and it was a win win.

[Anonymous]

OP here - thanks, everyone!

I had chosen this particular firm bc I knew they had experience with one particular deduction we were able to claim this year (and this year only). And the benefit we got was less than the tax prep fee!

So - next year, I'll likely be back on this board asking for recommendations for tax preparers or I'll be back to Turbo Tax. Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the first year we've used a tax service, and the bill for the tax preparation was significantly more than I was expecting. Our taxes are pretty generic - the usual categories of stuff: married, dual incomes, relatively vanilla investments, 529 contributions, both $ and non-$ charitable contributions... We do have to do a Schedule H for a single household employee, but I create the W2s and W3, so that information is all in one place. What would you think the cost would be for a tax service?

Thanks!

I have an accountant and I have 3 homes with 4 rental units and make about 250/yr salary. I pay about $750 and she does excellent job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those who are paying flesh-and-blood people over using Turbo Tax: Is the key saving time? Or do you find / suspect the preparer is able to give advice or save money?

We have always used turbo tax, but due to freelance writing income and beginning to invest, our taxes did get more complicated. Curious if there is monetary benefit in having someone take a look at our returns, or if reading the articles carefully is already covering our bases.

With my accountant it is about finding deductions and saving me money and strategy for the next year. Gives lots of advice and lets me know how to approach lots of things financially.

[Anonymous]

Holy moly. We pay our accountant 225 to do our taxes - we live overseas and own a piece of real estate that we rent. The one time I used HR block (when I was single) I was charged 350. Where are you going that charges upwards of 500??