taxes, accountant or turbotax?

[charlesbahn]

Accountant.

Some professions (medicine) are an automatic audit if you do them yourself, the IRS profiles them as unlikely to be objective.

[HarryD]

Originally Posted by Tishabet

This is a timely thread... am I the only person left who still does his taxes by hand? Back when I had an S-Corp and was consulting I had an accountant do my taxes, but these days the landscape seems pretty straightforward.... but perhaps I am being naive?

This years wife and I have:
Two W2s
investment income (stocks)
interest income (savings)
paid off student loans
paid off home loan (2nd mortgage)
Spent about 10k out of pocket on home improvements
paying first mortgage on home
donated money/goods to various charities

Seems pretty vanilla to me... would I still benefit from using turbo tax or the like? I'm not particularly sophisticated/experiences with taxes, I just try to follow the directions on the various schedules etc.

I have similar items. Used Turbo Tax for years. I like that it does not make mistakes in math etc.

Before that, did them by hand. I read each line of the 140 and asked myself it I had something other than a zero to enter.

If I had a business, I would use an accountant. To effective take advantage ofthe tax code, there are too many things I do not fully understand and want to use my time to more productive tasks.

[Aurel]

I used this site to e-file federal + state taxes, got my refund directly into checking account, cost me $14.99.

[campbellcj]

Combination - we have accountants do our business taxes (mine C-Corp hers S-Corp) but I do our personal returns in TurboTax. It has worked well and isn't too hard or time-consuming; although one year I did make a significant 5-figure mistake transcribing some of the business data into TurboTax and had to re-file when I eventually figured that out the next year. DOH!