Tax Day

It’s a necessary evil I suppose. I just really wish there was more accountability in how the money is spent.
Anyways, doing your taxes is always fun. In theory, when you select the correct withholding given your personal situation it should all come out even… though it never does.
In my opinion, a lot of money is spent on preparing taxes when people don’t realize how easy it is to do yourself, regardless of how complicated you think your taxes will be.
All your institutions send you the forms you need and then you just have to keep track of any deductions you may be able to take. If you’re questioning a deduction, just do a simple search on the IRS website to figure out if it really is a deduction and the form you need.
For instance, I thought it might be possible to deduct the items stolen during our break in that weren’t recovered or replaced. Indeed it was possible, with tax form 4684. Of course, upon reading the form I learned that it wasn’t going to help me any, but that’s beside the point.
My tax preparer of choice- Turbo Tax. And now you can even do it online so you don’t have to waste resources by buying a disk.
Anyways, it just interviews you. It asks simple questions about your situation and the tax forms you have and in the background it’s filling in the IRS forms.
When you’re done you can look at the actual forms to double check and it even goes through a double check for you and gives you an idea of your likelihood for auditing.
If you decide to enter charitable donations to Goodwill and you’re insecure about how much to claim for your items it uses a program called Its Deductible to give you fair market values so that’s one worry you can mark off the list.
I’ve used Turbo Tax every year since 1998, have gone from being a student with a part time job to married as a student with a part time job, to married with a full time job, to having 3 W2’s in a single year, to being divorced, to being married again. I’ve easily deducted charitable donations, tuition fees, mortgage interest, PMI, and stock market losses as well as claimed stock market gains and interest bearing accounts.
The H&R Block commercials make me laugh. You know you can be a Tax Professional there with absolutely no experience. If you’re going to have your taxes prepared by someone with no experience why not just do it yourself with a guide (Turbo Tax)? You’ll save money and after the 2nd or 3rd time you’ll have experience. And it’s valuable experience with your own situation.