2009 Taxes: Do 'em yourself or pay someone?

I pay H & R block by buying their software.

 

My wife loves doing the taxes. I'd get some software to do it, but she won't hear of it.

 

If your personal income has come purely within the State of Texas for the year, you've had one employer, and you haven't made some ungodly amount of gains/losses in the stock market, doing your taxes is a menial task. Everything is laid out on the form. I feel like people don't take nearly enough responsibility with their own personal finances. If people just took a little time out of their day to read up on how to manage money, just think about how much better everyone would be off. I'm amazed at how ignorant some people are when it comes to finances.....this is your LIVELIHOOD we're talking about. I'm not singling out the OP, or anyone on this board or anything, I'm just talking in general. Using a computer software to do your taxes is perfectly fine, because then at least you're the one inputting the data, so you've got an idea of what you're working with. I'm more referring to the people who don't even know how much they have in their bank accounts.

However, if you are a business owner, and/or you have multiple accounts to manage which include property ownership, or large market transactions, then I can completely understand why you would have an outside person do them for you. That ish gets complicated.

 

I do my own. Of course I do other people's for a living. :grin:

Obviously its cheaper to do them yourself, but paying a CPA will cut down on mistakes and save you time. Plus you may not be aware of all the the deductions/credits you can take advantage of.

 

I used to do them myself when all I did was the 1040 EZ. Really simple.

Now that I have so many deductions I pay someone to save myself the the liability and headache.

 

You are liable for their mistakes.

 

I do them myself on Turbotax.

 

I'm cool with IRS, so they just let me get away with not filing them.

 

I do contract work as well as being self employed so I pay a CPA.

I might overpay a little, but it has saved me a ton versus autofiling.

 

I do them myself and do a few of my close relatives' ones via TaxActOnline.com and it's never failed me. I highly recommend them.

 

If you miss out on a deduction... is that considered a fail?

 

I get a guarantee from H&R block.

 

It takes 10 minutes when you only have one job and are a student

 

A guarantee on what? They are in no way taking on any liability for YOUR return. They just put the information you give them on the forms and maybe just giving you a guarantee they did that correctly- nothing more.

 

I got a guy.

DD

 

Same here.

Was a little bit harder with joint filing this year, but I still managed it pretty easy.

 

exactly. They guarantee that all my correct info gets input correctly.

I'm not trying to use my dog as a dependent...yet

 

Turbotax, bro.

 

This year I have some consulting and nonprofit work in addition to the regular so I think I will actually get professional guidance this time around. If you have the right guy you can get rabbits pulled out of a hat.