I am hardly the most organized of people (a big understatement at best),
but I am very careful with anything to do with taxes (US and state).
When the first piece of paper comes in that has anything related to a
year's taxes, I put it in a big manila envelope marked "200X Taxes". As
the year progresses, that is where everything related to taxes goes
immediately. Being retired, my tax returns aren't all that complicated,
but I have been using TurboTax ever since it came out on a couple of
floppy diskettes, and I have never had a problem either filing or being
questioned by the IRS. (and, like the other posters, I do NOT file
electronically and don't have direct deposit of my refund.) I am
guessing that the IRS has a little more confidence in returns filed by
TurboTax than they do returns filled out by hand - at least they know
the math is right, even if some of the numbers might not be.
I think that, if I ever came in to large sums from the lottery or an
inheritance or was involved in my own business (all highly unlikely!), I
would seek professional advice (NOT from a storefront operation!), but
so far I have not encountered any financial situations that were outside
the application's capabilities. The big challenge will occur when we are
forced to start redeeming IRA's that are very, very old. One of the best
parts of TurboTax is being able to import data from the federal filing
directly into the state return. I can usually do both in a couple of hours.
Mike
Wayne Dernoncourt wrote:
b_s-wilk
On Aug 9, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Wayne Dernoncourt wrote:
I'm thinking we should go to a tax person to deal
with this.
Yes you should. I found that fighting the software
distracted me from other important tax issues, causing
a mess. I filed and then had to hire a human to refile
a correct form.
We do our own taxes, small business and all. Tax software
isn't particularly efficient, but having everything in a
database/spreadsheet at the end is convenient. It often
takes more time to use software or an accountant than to
fill out forms yourself. Most of the work is gathering
all of the pieces of paper, records, notes, numbers,
statememts, forms. I use my own Excel spreadsheet, then
sometimes TurboTax.
<snip>
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