How much do you pay your tax preparer - and referral?

[Anonymous]

Just use TurboTax. Cheap and easy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I just started and completed our taxes on Saturday using TurboTax. Easy as pie. We’re getting a $31,225 federal income tax refund. I doubt that an accountant could get better results.

But they’d give you better tax advice.

[Anonymous]

How much do yall tip your tax preparers?

[Anonymous]

Between $500-800 at two firms recently, each for single people (me and mom). New firm I am trying this year charges $700/ea and that covers any followup questions etc. during the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much do yall tip your tax preparers?

$0.00 and I take a few granola bars on the way out.

[Anonymous]

We paid $2,200 this year. It's pretty much the same every year. Our CPA is also our financial advisor. It is very convenient to have someone who knows your entire financial situation. Looking at his invoice, he completed 25 forms/schedules in addition to the return. I have no desire to tackle that at all, thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH and I just started and completed our taxes on Saturday using TurboTax. Easy as pie. We’re getting a $31,225 federal income tax refund. I doubt that an accountant could get better results.

You’re doing something wrong if your return is that high.

How do you figure? We ended up having $1,274,615 withheld from our W-2 income and nothing from our interest, dividend, and brokerage income. After completing our taxes, the actual amount should have been $1,243,390. Our withholding was only off by 2.5%, well within normal tolerance levels.

[Anonymous]

“ The TT audit defense people spotted immediately what the source of the problem was, we sent in evidence of payment to them, and they handled all the IRS end of things.”

This is interesting to hear that you found audit defense to be competent and worth the money. When I have contacted the TurboTax support people with questions, they were very hard to reach and did not seem to have much more knowledge than I did. They were just sort of poking around in the software to look for answers to my questions just like I would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:😱 at some of these prices!

I do my own taxes online. We always have self employment income and W-2s and we used to have rental income with depreciation. It's not that hard. The websites walk you through it for the most part. I used to go into the state website and retype all the numbers so I could file free, but now I am old and lazy and I pay $9.95 to e-file the state on the same website I file federal on 😂

yeah well that will not work for all. Return includes mutiple countries and states. 5k and that is with a discount.

You can definitely do multi state online too. I've never had to file international taxes so I can't speak to that side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I just started and completed our taxes on Saturday using TurboTax. Easy as pie. We’re getting a $31,225 federal income tax refund. I doubt that an accountant could get better results.

Oh, man, oh man.

Getting a huge refund means you are bad at taxes. To start, you gave the government an $15000 0-interest loan. And that's suggestive of other mistakes.

An accountant would get you better results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’re retired. We paid $1200 last year for a fairly simple return that includes two rental properties, income from our brokerage accounts, and the occasional withdrawal from retirement account. We use a Maryland based firm although we live in DC. They just notified us that they are raising our fee to an estimated $2200 and when I asked why they said they have been undercharging us. I’m surprised by the increase, but what can you do?

Wow $2200??? Your return hardly sounds complicated. There must be less expensive options that aren’t TurboTax/H&R Block.

Yeah, you would think. Probably after this year I am going to look around. I thought $1200 a year was reasonable but I don’t think double that is. The main issue is I’m just lazy and knowing that my accountant has probably a dozen years of my tax related stuff at their fingertips if I ever get audited or whatever keeps me tethered to them.

Statute of limitations is 3 years. A dozen years worth of stuff is irrelevant.

3 years without probable cause.

6 years with probable cause.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/irs-audits

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$150-200 to TurboTax? We have 2 salaries, a standard mortgage, I have stock awards some years, we sell stock some years, we have a brokerage investment account and a handful of interest bearing accounts. We itemize for charitable contributions. It takes my husband 3-5 hours total.

Why is anyone paying $1000+ unless you own your own business? Even nanny / household employees can be handled by a service for a low monthly fee.

+1. It seems insane to me to pay more than a nominal amount for the privilege of paying taxes.

I think it's because a lot of people have an understandable fear of an audit- not about paying more taxes per se, but the stress/time. That is understandable, but the actual risk for 99.9% of people is incredibly small. Even if you make a substantial error, most of the time the IRS response is to send you a notice and a bill. That happened to us years ago- we forgot about some freelance work one of us did early in the year, and somehow didn't notice the 1099 when it came in. Never got reported on the return. Two years later we get a notice from the IRS saying "hey, you didn't report this income, you owe us ~$2k and some small penalties". Looked it up, they were of course right, filled out the form, sent the check, and everything was good. Apparently that is considered a "correspondence audit" and makes up 3/4 of all audits:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/irs-tax-audits-triggers.html

I think most people are fearful of the much more in depth type, which as the article shows, is very unlikely. I'll bet most of that 0.1% for people in middle income ranges are basic mistakes like ours, and the vast majority of the rest are pretty complicated returns that raise a bunch of red flags. If your return isn't like that (and it sounds like almost none discussed here are), the risk is incredibly low.

The only risk is if you have no savings and can't pay what you owe. The IRS doesn't care if you file and pay completely wrong taxes, as long as you agree to pay when they correct you.