Taxes - who does em?

Who does your taxes?

  • Me

    Votes: 50 53.2%

  • Family member

    Votes: 4 4.3%

  • Accountant/Tax guy I pay

    Votes: 33 35.1%

  • Taxes are for little people

    Votes: 7 7.4%
  • Total voters
    94
I am responsible for filing income taxes for 9 different entities. My immediate family, 5 different trusts, and 3 estates. I handle all of them except three trusts which are tied to a sticky family situation, where I prefer to keep that work at arm's length. Family assclownery probably costs the recipients of those trusts $2k/yr in legal and filing expenses that would avoidable otherwise.
 
Years ago (I retired in from the military in 75) I was put on orders to go to tax school, and be a tax assistance officer to help the troops file their income tax. I was furious but complied. To date I have never paid anyone to do my taxes. Thank you US Army. :D
 
pmanton said:
Years ago (I retired in from the military in 75) I was put on orders to go to tax school, and be a tax assistance officer to help the troops file their income tax. I was furious but complied. To date I have never paid anyone to do my taxes. Thank you US Army. :D
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Wow. Back in my Army days, my life was at its simplest when it came to financial and tax matters. What assistance was needed?
 
I heard about a real estate developer/reality show guy that doesn’t do taxes. ;)
 
Been doing my own for a couple of years now with H&R Block.
 
I've used the H&R Block software for the past 2 years. So far I've been pretty happy with it, just an afternoon plugging in numbers from various forms, then phone calls to all the places that didn't send me what I need, then another afternoon finishing it all off.
 
I may switch to the H&R Block sw. I just saw that TurboTax is now keeping 0.5% of all refunds.
 
I use a CPA to handle those yearly government extortion demands.
 
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SkyDog58 said:
Wow. Back in my Army days, my life was at its simplest when it came to financial and tax matters. What assistance was needed?
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I too was sent to tax prep school by my command. Not only did I help some our less sophisticated personnel with filing their taxes, I taught them and/or their spouses how to manage a budget and balance their check books. Whenever some kid’s wife would kite a check at the exchange, yours truly spent personal time doing the “extra military instruction”.
 
Coming off a very complicated tax year, I am sooooo looking forward to life simplification. When you owe the IRS big $$$, it's so much better to pay it right away. Like ripping off a Band-Aid quick, it hurts less!
 
I use Block Financial's software for my personal taxes. This year I have to do a trust return for an owner financed sale of my mother's home, and I'm using TaxAct for that.

If all you have is wages, brokerage statements, mortgage interest, property taxes, and charitable contribution, there's no reason not to use the tax software. If you own a business, you probably need a professional.

Next year, I'm probably going to take a hit on the state and local tax deduction, with both of us working full time, our state income tax bill will be close to the limit on state and local taxes, and we won't be able to deduct our property tax, even here in medium tax Georgia.
 
Switched from doing them myself to an accounting firm made up of two people and a few non-accounting staff during a particularly difficult tax prep year.

They have saved me so much time with a complex tax situation that they’re well worth it. They also answer my dumb questions throughout the year which TurboTax could never do.

On the low end they’re about double what tax software costs, but they save me 2 to 3 times the hours I would have to put in to do what they do. On the high end, the messiest year ran me just under $1000. That was the year that drove me to look for references and hire them.

2017 tax year is the first year in half a decade my finished taxes weren’t pushing an inch thick, just the IRS forms, and I even started a new business in March of ‘17. Soooo... I’ll keep using them.

This year’s scoreboard? $100 back from State and $100 back from Federal. Can’t get it any closer or more accurate than that! A little of that was dumb luck but mostly it was years of solid counsel from them. Even they laughed we hit it that close this year though.
 
Tax specialist,have used for years. Now that I’m retired may try it myself next year.
 
For decades my mother, a tax attorney, did them. I switched to a CPA when I felt it was being burdensome on her. Now I just use turbotax.
 
Been using H&R for maybe 15 years. Their prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Paid $260 this year for 30 mins of work. I’m thinking of going back on my own next year.
 
I said "me", though actually it was Turbo Tax this year. I used H&R Block last two years, but they charged me over $250 and this year would have been even more, because I had two state tax returns to file.

Luckily I got a nice fat refund from the feds. :)

Edit: just read @Velocity173 's post above mine... yeah exactly. $260 for 30 mins work. Definitely too steep for me, especially with the extra state tax this year.
 
We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes

Leona Hemsley....aka Queen of Mean.

hemsley4cr.jpg
 
I had been using an accountant.

But over the last several years my financial situation kept getting simpler and simpler, but the accountant’s rate kept going up regardless - to over $400 last year.

This year I just sprang for TurboTax, and I’m pretty confident I haven’t missed anything.
 
I use TaxAct and have been for years and am happy. I do two States and Federal. The price went up allot this year, not sure why. Next year could be interesting as most of my deductions will be overtaken by the increase in the standard deduction. A friend suggested paying two years worth of church donations every other year along with other deductibles to have a lower tax base in alternating years.
 
I find I have to spend time explaining all the numbers and details of my tax situation to the CPA. After all that work, it isn't much more just to enter it into TurboTax myself. It also helps that I have a relative that works for Intuit so I get TurboTax at a heavily discounted price.
 
Taxes? Just setup a couple of Caymen Island shell corporations and be done. Since we're all rich pilots, I assumed that's what everyone did.
 
I turn into a bigger grouch than I normally am when it’s time to round up all the tax docs. I can’t imagine doing it myself...I think the family would opt to stay at a hotel for a few days just to stay out of my way.

Plus, it seems every year is special/different with a new situation, buying, selling, starting something.

I just hate shelling out money for something I know I could do myself. But glad to see I’m not alone.
 
mfisher said:
So if you would have put in X hours of time, how many hours do your accountants save you?
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Thought I was clear about that. They do things in an hour that would take me two to three. Which is why I don’t get concerned when they’re done relatively quickly. Just making up numbers here...

Let’s say it takes them 4 hours and they charge me $200. That’s $50/hr. But... that same stuff would take me 8-12 hours.

At 8 hours of my time saved for the equivalent of $25 an hour, I’ll do that all day long. At 12 it’s a complete no-brainer.

That plus the added benefit that they don’t charge for mid-year “dumb question” phone calls? Yeah, complete no-brainer. Taxes, payroll, and accounting is all they do all day every day. I don’t need to know what they know. They’ve got more hours in their logbook than I’ll ever have in those topics.

Not everybody needs that, I get it. A box of TurboTax is fine if your taxes consist of nothing but copying numbers in boxes off of a W-2. Computer software is the perfect solution to that.

Example. In FY2017 I called at least three times talking to one of the partners about properly setting up the flight instructing business. Just dumb questions about silly stuff I did a little research on and thought I had done correctly, but also little weird things. I had gotten them right but having an expert in that field saying I did, made me much happier about it.

Dumb Question Example: The flight instructing business is simply a sole-proprietor pass-through. It ends up on my personal taxes. But the stupid bank made me get and provide an EIN for a business account. I knew keeping separate accounts is the right thing to do, but I wondered... “Will this cause a problem for a pass-through?”

No. It won’t. And I was pretty sure it wouldn’t, but it was nice to ask a pro and get it confirmed. Also mildly annoyed with the bank, they were supposed to use my SSN for a sole-proprietor account. But their computer told their staff members no... so... why argue with the bank computer? Just ask the accountant.

“Doesn’t matter. Either way is fine.” Okay all cool, thanks...
 
Used to use turbo tax.......that's probably the 90% solution for a lot of folks. Switched to CPA (wife of a friend) once my wife started her business. Being military, out of our state of residence, I figured that as her paycheck began to supersede my own, it was probably worth involving someone who knows what they are doing. Tax filing is whatever, but having someone to sanity check her withholding/quarterly tax payments has been beneficial.
 
Half Fast said:
Either way I’d gnaw my arm off at the shoulder to get away....
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mscard88 said:
That's called coyote ugly I believe.
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Then there's alligator ugly... when you get home, you gnaw off both legs so you can't ever go back.

Both qualify.


Oh, and Turbo Tax for me. I'll e-file the Federal for free, but mail in the state return. No way I'm paying them another $25 for e-file there.
 
denverpilot said:
Thought I was clear about that. They do things in an hour that would take me two to three. Which is why I don’t get concerned when they’re done relatively quickly. Just making up numbers here...

Let’s say it takes them 4 hours and they charge me $200. That’s $50/hr. But... that same stuff would take me 8-12 hours.

At 8 hours of my time saved for the equivalent of $25 an hour, I’ll do that all day long. At 12 it’s a complete no-brainer.

That plus the added benefit that they don’t charge for mid-year “dumb question” phone calls? Yeah, complete no-brainer. Taxes, payroll, and accounting is all they do all day every day. I don’t need to know what they know. They’ve got more hours in their logbook than I’ll ever have in those topics.

Not everybody needs that, I get it. A box of TurboTax is fine if your taxes consist of nothing but copying numbers in boxes off of a W-2. Computer software is the perfect solution to that.

Example. In FY2017 I called at least three times talking to one of the partners about properly setting up the flight instructing business. Just dumb questions about silly stuff I did a little research on and thought I had done correctly, but also little weird things. I had gotten them right but having an expert in that field saying I did, made me much happier about it.

Dumb Question Example: The flight instructing business is simply a sole-proprietor pass-through. It ends up on my personal taxes. But the stupid bank made me get and provide an EIN for a business account. I knew keeping separate accounts is the right thing to do, but I wondered... “Will this cause a problem for a pass-through?”

No. It won’t. And I was pretty sure it wouldn’t, but it was nice to ask a pro and get it confirmed. Also mildly annoyed with the bank, they were supposed to use my SSN for a sole-proprietor account. But their computer told their staff members no... so... why argue with the bank computer? Just ask the accountant.

“Doesn’t matter. Either way is fine.” Okay all cool, thanks...
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Did you win the lottery, AGAIN?? LOL
 
H&R Block user here. I use their sw for the feds, then file online for state.
 
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