Turbo Tax

[joec]

I’ve used Turbo tax for as long as I can remember. We’re self employed and probably have a pretty complicated tax return I think. Most people would think I’m foolish for doing it on my own, but having worked in finance before and having seen wrong and bad advice given by CPAs when meeting with clients, I suppose I’m a bit skeptical that “any” CPA or EA will do a good job. Any “great or top” CPA/EA will have too many clients if they are good and not enough time to focus on doing a good job on just your return or your business/tax situation I feel.

The main benefit I see with using Turbotax is it just works and you can open any form if you need to. I’ve had to do that on a few occasions mostly for Schedule C stuff, but if you know the tax law a bit, you would know where to look and since it transfers stuff over from one year to the next, you can look at your last years return and make sure you get the same deduction if the program forgot it which it did last year on a few things.

Another thing to consider is you, as a tax payer simply care more about your return than anyone else. The CPA can do your return and has all the knowledge, but even then, I don’t think all CPAs care/love tax so this varies and their goal is just to “mostly” bill and move on to the next guy.

I love learning about and doing my taxes and find it’s fun to save as much as I can so I enjoy doing it myself. It’s nice to see the Turbotax calculator drop what you owe as you enter the numbers. I also spend a ton of time keeping up and reading various tax boards and any relevant tax news so it is a large time commitment to see what has changed from year to year. Turbotax does a decent job of keeping you informed in general.

As others have mentioned, keeping up with your own data that you’d need to give to the CPA is the big pain point and the CPA isn’t going to be helping me entering all the business data so hiring one wouldn’t help me much.

If your return is relatively simple, I don’t see why anyone would need to hire a CPA honestly as most major tax deduction legislation would be hard to miss by Turbotax.

[SK in CV]

Great comment joe. I could quibble with some minor details but overall it’s pretty accurate. People who aren’t afraid of their taxes should at least try to do them themselves. It can be overwhelming for some, but it’s certainly worth a try if the alternative is paying much more than a few hundred bucks to a professional preparer.

I do want to comment on this though:

[quote=joec]
If your return is relatively simple, I don’t see why anyone would need to hire a CPA honestly as most major tax deduction legislation would be hard to miss by Turbotax.[/quote]

The likelihood of a tax professional understanding legislation better than the people at Turbotax is extraordinarily slim. They hire scores of CPA’s to review legislation and make sure their software is consistent with the law. About 20 years ago I actually found a flaw in their software (one of the professional versions, they produce two professional tax software programs in addition to Turbotax) and they fixed it. (It’s a slight exaggeration to say “I” found it. One of my tax managers found it. He went to work for them the next year. As far as I know, he’s still there.) They have professionals working with incredibly narrow focus (like people dedicated to nothing but the home office deduction, or as my former employee was doing, just on ACE depreciation). They might miss something, but the chances are really slim that a professional tax preparer would catch something they don’t.

[Coronita]

yes folks, buy more intuit software. I still have equity from there and it would be nice if it can double again….:)

If you haven’t tried it already quickbooks and go payment… Just saying….

[SK in CV]

[quote=flu]yes folks, buy more intuit software. I still have equity from there and it would be nice if it can double again….:)

If you haven’t tried it already quickbooks and go payment… Just saying….[/quote]

Funny you should bring that up. My former employee left to work for Intuit in the fall of 1994 (I just looked it up.), and one of the things they gave him was a shitload of market value options. They wouldn’t ordinarily vest for a couple years or more, but in Oct. 94 Microsoft tried to buy Intuit to get Quicken. Intuit stock shot up, and had the transaction closed, all his options would have vested. His take on the deal would have been well over $1M. Pretty good deal for a guy in his late 20’s. But alas, the DOJ said no go, MSFT can’t buy that winner. So his >$1M disappeared. At least for the moment. The stock is currently 20X higher than it was then, so I’m sure he’s made that money and much more since then. But that instant millionaire status would have been pretty nice for him back then.

Sorry for the hijack.

[Coronita]

[quote=SK in CV][quote=flu]yes folks, buy more intuit software. I still have equity from there and it would be nice if it can double again….:)

If you haven’t tried it already quickbooks and go payment… Just saying….[/quote]

Funny you should bring that up. My former employee left to work for Intuit in the fall of 1994 (I just looked it up.), and one of the things they gave him was a shitload of market value options. They wouldn’t ordinarily vest for a couple years or more, but in Oct. 94 Microsoft tried to buy Intuit to get Quicken. Intuit stock shot up, and had the transaction closed, all his options would have vested. His take on the deal would have been well over $1M. Pretty good deal for a guy in his late 20’s. But alas, the DOJ said no go, MSFT can’t buy that winner. So his >$1M disappeared. At least for the moment. The stock is currently 20X higher than it was then, so I’m sure he’s made that money and much more since then. But that instant millionaire status would have been pretty nice for him back then.

Sorry for the hijack.[/quote]

Judging for the comps I was seeing a few years ago, I’m sure he did alright…Maybe not early 1990’s Qualcomm well, but still well.

Intuit is a pretty well run company. I really can’t say too many bad things about the company (which is unusual for me, because I always have something critical to say about a firm, big or small…)

They’ve got the tax business pretty well dialed in. There was a bunch of jokers that use to say, just wait until (1) the another company comes into their tax prep space or (2) wait until the government simplifies taxes, then it’s screwed… Ain’t gonna happen. #2 is never gonna happen…(come on, our tax system is one of the most complicated ones around).. And #1 is really not going to happen, because the barrier to entry is so high to develop good prep-software…

There was at one point folks were concerned about Intuit’s growth story. But they’ve been trying to get into the small biz market, which if they are successful, would be a good thing. Their acquisition of GoPayment was a good thing, since mobile payments will be huge.

Company stock,under Bennett, didn’t really move during those few years. Not really his fault. He was actually a good leader imho…Under Brad Smith, the company has been trying to go after growth, and it seems to be working (somewhat)…The stock has been hitting all time highs recently, for whatever reasons.

I think my only gripe of the company was I wanted to work on something more geeking/nerdy/hardcore, and it probably wasn’t the best fit for me. Kinda stupid on my part because factoring in the base pay + almost guaranteed bonus 20-25%+ (for decent good performers) stock options + RSU + generous vacation + decent health plans versus what I get now + hours to deal with overseas customers, development, etc, I took a pay cut for the privilege of working on “stuff that is cooler”….Hmmm……(dumb ass, lol…People said I was nuts for leaving…Then again, people said I was nuts for leaving QC too, and about a 4-5 other startups…)

[SK in CV]

The secret to their success really shouldn’t be a secret. They just make damn good products that are simple to use and sell them at a reasonable price. Quicken first and then QB have been revolutionary. And they never rested, continually trying to make their products better. They’ve failed a few times, and got ahead of themsevles, but they always seem to come back and fix what doesn’t work. They kinda put me out of business.

[bzribee]

Mark Kellner (Washington Times–should my link not work) just compared several computer programs (TurboTax, H&R Block, some others):

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/4/kellner-2-extra-days-for-tax-prep-but-time-to-get-/

[Author]

Posts