It’s GREAT. Typically very powerful. Obviously if you enter in garbage you will get garbage out. Unless your taxes are extremely complicated (and even then) you can typically get it all entered and it will get all the deductions.

Try it out free! http://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/get-started/questionnaire.jsp?priorityCode=3468337910&productid=&abtest=random%3D40751

Just click on whatever one you want and plug in your numbers. Just plug in this year’s numbers (or even try last years) and see how close it comes. A tip I always recommend is to get ALL your forms from your accountant last year and make sure that you look at all of them and compare them to the TurboTax to see how close it comes.

But it’s really a powerful program and probably will save you a ton of money vs. accountant.

Love it… But I’m biased. Because I use to work at Intuit. And it was free for me to use… Now I just get friends who work there to buy me intuit products at 2/3% off retail. Including quickbooks.

I think CPA’s/accountants might help you brainstorm and plan.. That’s what I do when I talk to them. T

Also love Turbotax and have used for 10+ years. Vanguard will give it to you free/reduced rate depending on how much you have invested with them. Our taxes are quite complex but the program has had no issues with them.

It seems to me that the hardest part of doing your taxes is gathering together all of the paperwork, receipts, etc. And you have to do that whether you use a CPA or do it yourself. So why not just do it yourself.

If any issues come up, there is a huge user community to provide answers to your questions.

[quote=rent4now]I didn’t realize you could try it out for free. Thats a great idea.
If I get back more from turbo vs our cpa im gonna demand a refund! :)[/quote]

Yep. They make it SUPER easy now where you don’t even need to download any software. Best of all, you can just use a gmail account to figure out your taxes and don’t have to pay anything until you file. You can use a few different email addresses if you want to make some different scenarios and you don’t even need to buy the program if you don’t want.

I’ve been using Intuit products for years and they are great! I don’t think it gets much better than Turbo Tax. Great program.

As others mentioned, the toughest part of taxes I think is getting together all your stuff. But even that is not too difficult if you just start doing it yourself. What I’ve found helpful is making a spreadsheet with everything you would need. The various bank accounts, investment accounts, etc. Just entering the data from the 1099’s, etc.

Then once you do it one year, you will have all the data entry points you will need for the following year. Sure, things might change with the law but as UCGal mentioned, Turbo Tax’s interview process will typically alert you to any changes.

Also, I really believe that doing your own taxes helps empower you to understand your tax situation more. Once you take a good look how everything ties together I just believe it makes you more aware about your finances.

And these days it’s easier than ever because before you had to wait until all your banks, investment companies mailed you out the forms. But now it’s all online and Turbo Tax will automatically pull the data from almost all banks and investment firms. Couldn’t be easier and not much to enter at all compared to many years ago.

pulling together your tax documents isn’t hard.

On Jan 1st of each year start a folder labeled taxes (with the year.)

Everything that might be needed for taxes gets tossed in there. Receipts for charitable donations, stock transaction statements (especially if they’re RSUs and the reporting at the end of the year sucks – like my employers case.) etc.

In our case we have continuing education and licensing fees for my husband – toss the receipts for those in there. If there is charitable mileage – we toss records of that in the folder as they accrue.

When you pay your car registration – make note of the deductable amount (it’s not the full amount)… toss that in the folder.

Then, later, as the year wraps up – toss the transaction summer/year end reports from your brokerage accounts. As the 1099’s and W2s come in – toss those in as well.

It seems obvious – but I didn’t start doing this till about 10 years ago. Now I don’t have any issue with gathering the info. I just grab that folder.

I’d rather have the software that runs on MY computer — I’m not f–king exposing personal financial data to the “cloud” more than I have to. Personal data online = privacy-rape. Yeah, yeah, bank accounts are already accessible online; but they’re not all in one place with the same login/password combo.

This being said, I use Excel and the fill-in PDF tax forms, then send them via snail-mail. If it costs the gov’t more to process them, good. Maybe there will be a few less bucks in the pockets of the bloated defense and over-militarized law enforcement industries.

[quote=spdrun]I’d rather have the software that runs on MY computer — I’m not f–king exposing personal financial data to the “cloud” more than I have to. The more personal data online, the more opportunities for privacy-rape. Yeah, yeah, bank accounts are already accessible online; but they’re not all in one place with the same login/password combo.

This being said, I use Excel and the fill-in PDF tax forms, then send them via snail-mail. If it costs the gov’t more to process them, good. Maybe there will be a few less bucks in the pockets of the bloated defense and over-militarized law enforcement industries.[/quote]

I will never send in paper snail mail tax forms again. True story. Back about 6 years ago I sent in a paper snail mail tax return. You can imagine my surprise when I got a letter from the IRS that said I had $700,000 due. I got audited due to this. I knew it had to be wrong as I didn’t even make nearly that amount for that tax year!!!

It turns out that the IRS lost several pages of my Schedule D -1 forms. That year I did monster trading and I had a few dozen pages of D1 forms. I don’t know how they lost them but they just calculated my cost basis on my trades as $0. It was a nightmare.

After that I just have filed electronically. I will never send in paper forms again after that. Yes the IRS makes mistakes and loses paperwork.

I can’t tell you how much time and aggravation I spent on that one. In the end I had to pay about $3,700 more which was no big deal. But once you get audited, you can get audited again in the future. After that I got audited 2 more times. But didn’t have to pay more and in one of the times I get $9 back.