$0 usually, my sister does mine.This year I'll pay for the software and will give her $50.

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.

The first year we switched from Turbo Tax to an accountant, we saved over $1000 on our taxes. We some complicated rental issues, though.

The $350 sounds reasonable. I used to work as a CPA and we would charge over $1000 for returns, but they were more complicated. I am no longer a practicing CPA. I use Tax Cut which is cheaper than TurboTax but does the same thing. Also - the people at H&R block are usually not CPA's. I know H&R block trains people to prepare taxes. If you go with an accounting firm chances are the person preparing your return has a college degree in accounting and has either passed the CPA exam or is studying for the CPA exam.

About $900 for my partner and I - we have a rental property and live together unmarried with two children, so there are some small complications with that. Once we get rid of the rental property (it's on the market now), we will go back to doing it alone.

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. 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.

If it takes you a day to do all your taxes using turbo tax, then it's not a time thing, it's a brain thing.

Shut up fool.

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?

Yes.

Yeah, we've been paying, but I'm almost ready to switch to TurboTax. It seems that every year I'm the one who's thinking of additional deductions we might take, and the accountant's response is always something like "Yes, that's a good idea." I really wish it was his idea, not mine!

Anonymous wrote:$600, which I think is a lot. We have an out of state rental property, I'm an independent contractor, we just bought a house. DH keeps saying he'll just use turbo tax, but never does. . .

If that's an issue WHY ON EARTH DOES "DH" HAVE TO DO IT? Are you incapable of doing it yourself?

Anonymous wrote:New to the area and pricing CPAs. One quoted me a minimum of $350.

We are a simple case; filing jointly, mortgage, one child, no businesses, and no retirement (don't judge, this is another topic for a another thread). HHI $175,000 if that matters.

We have already decided on a CPA vs. H&R block, but I could be convinced otherwise.

How much do you pay to get your taxes done?

Our situation is pretty similar, with a slightly lower HHI. We did our taxes last night with TaxAct Online - cost us a grand total of $13.95! I've used TaxAct when we had dividends, cashed out 401k (yes, I know...), had 1099 income, business expenses, etc. They walk you right through it. Easy peasy.

Anonymous wrote:I would just do turbotax - just as easy as using a guy.

Seriously, if you "use a guy" basically you do all the TurboTax work anyway, and he just inputs the numbers into a program and charges for hundreds of dollars.

For a situation as you describe, OP, TurboTax or the H&R Block At Home software would work just fine.

We first used turbotax- thought our situation got more complex and hired an accountant in mclean. Accountant had us compile and add up all of our stuff beforehand in his method that took actually more time than turbotax- and then I had to spend close to two hours going over each item one by one with the accountant (and paying for his time). The accountant tacked on more time after we met so our bill was over $1K. The accountant believed in inputting all figures manually (versus turbotax that can import and then you verify amounts) - and missed a huge number in our W2s two years in a row resulting in refiling our taxes for fed and state. We are super happy using turbo tax on our own now!!! I also went back and compared the results and it came up pretty darn close (except I paid $60 for tubotax and $1K+ for accountant).

I use Rosenbloom CPAs, and am very happy with them. We pay them $750, which is actually cheaper than H&R Block was charging us (and H&R Block majorly screwed up our taxes one year, and also put my DH's personal SS# instead of the business's tax ID# on the 1099s they sent out to his contractors). DH owns his own business, and we have investments, etc.

Ours is about $1400 I think. Self employed, multiple state returns, estimated taxes.

I used turbo tax until I really couldn't anymore. It still takes a day to enter/collect everything for the accountant.

Anonymous wrote: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.

I think most people here are saying that if your taxes are simple, then turbo tax is the way to go. It sounds to me like you have a complicated case - if I did, I would use an accountant, too.

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.

If it takes you a day to do all your taxes using turbo tax, then it's not a time thing, it's a brain thing.