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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]$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. [/quote]

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

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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