Until I think five years ago, I did our taxes myself; it was about five years ago that I gave up in tears and frustration. I was making my best guesses at what things meant, even after reading the instructions and searching on the IRS site and using tax software and so forth, and after a certain number of years of that, we started paying a professional. What an absolute SCHEME capitalism is, that we need to pay people tons of money to tell us how much money we need to pay our own government, because our government makes the forms too difficult for its citizens to figure out.
It seems like using a tax preparer would be so much less stressful! And it kind of is. But there is still the part where I have to get all the paperwork in order, and some of our forms aren’t ready until March, and there’s the part where I worry that I am forgetting something, and the part where it costs a fair chunk of money; and now there is also the part where I worry that our tax preparer is judging us and/or thinks we’re pretty dumb about money.
I know to ignore that last thought as much as possible. I know the sensible thing to think is that our tax preparer deals with a lot of people’s taxes and does not have the time, the mental energy, or the connection to us that she would need in order to care, let alone judge. But…I am a human being in this world, and I know I have found time and mental energy to care about MANY, MANY THINGS I should not care about, including what a tax preparer thinks of me, so this is not a compelling argument. Plus: I am on Twitter, so I have SEEN tax professionals talking about the ways in which they judge people.
Well. There is nothing I can do about any of that. But I have noticed over the years that whenever I am putting off a stressful task, ESPECIALLY if it is the kind of stressful task where it needs to be done sooner or later so it might as well be sooner, and yet I am still putting it off as if I wish to draw out the enjoyment of the stress as long as possible—in those cases, telling you about it tends to have a strongly motivating effect. I am hoping that this post will cause me to load all my tax stuff up and drop it off at the preparer’s office tomorrow.
I have been using a tax preparer since adopting K, because I wasn’t sure about the adoption tax credit. I’ve used him ever since because it’s so much easier to give it to someone else. I know my taxes are relatively simple, but not having to wade through things that are simple for him and complicated for me makes it much, much easier and absolutely worth the money. I keep a file through the year of tax stuff and I have a list of things I need before I can submit it to him, so as soon as my checklist is done I pack it up and send it. I understand not wanting to feel judged, but I’ve gotten better about not caring about it over the years.
It is only recently that I’ve developed a little system for me to remember what is needed every year. It is definitely a pain to collect and organise but I would certainly rather that than figure out how to input and file them myself. I don’t actually care if someone else thinks I’m dumb, I will take their help and pay them money then forget about it as soon as the season is over!
I, too, used to do my own tax returns, even while self-employed. Then, when I had some questions about sales tax (it’s a little complicated in my state and business category), I found an accountant who worked with a lot of small business owners in my field. So I’ve been doing that ever since.
I hate it, it’s a terrible chore, it doesn’t really seem to save that much time, and it costs a lot. But I still do it. I’ve trained myself to categorize all our household spending once a week, using Quicken, and that makes things easier at the end of the year. My accounting software doesn’t let me download my banking transactions, so I still have to enter all those by hand, and I do put it off until January.
One thing that helps, although it doesn’t save any time or make it any easier, is I make it a game to send everything to the accountant correctly THE FIRST TIME. I don’t want them to call me and say, “what about X?” Not that it’s a big deal — they don’t care — but, like I said, it’s a game.
Also, those who do not have to worry about the tax return (ahem, my spouse) don’t understand what a chore it is to gather everything. They must think that the accountant magically has what they need, et voila! Tax return.
The other thing that helps is that I have a self-imposed deadline that everything must be to the accountant by mid-February. That way, it’s done and I don’t have to think about it.
So funny – I use the exact opposite strategy to help me get started. I just send the easy stuff (it’s electronic) and pull the rest together when I can. Every year something is missing and I figure my tax prep person would rather I had it in early vs complete and last minute
Also I typed tax perp and that just seems fitting because it’s a total racket. The government knows what I earned (last year they even gave me a bigger refund bc we missed something) and they mostly know what we owe. Why do we have to pay to submit all the stuff the government ALL READY HAS? We should just submit the part they don’t know.
This is just it! There are countries where you don’t have to submit anything because the government calculates everything for you!!!
As the CPA’s least competent assistant (and wife) please let me urge you, if you are feeling judged AT ALL, to find another accountant. Apart from being knowledgeable and ethical, their whole job is to make you feel relieved and that you’re in good hands. You deserve that attitude and you are paying for it. You wouldn’t keep going to a doctor who was all judgey-judgey, right? Same for the accountant. And now back to answering phones, because that’s all I’m allowed to do.
This is a very good comment!
I am a tax preparer, and I promise you, we’re too busy to judge you. Maybe if you wail about not being able to pay your balance due and next week I see on Facebook that you’re in Italy. I might get a little judgy then. But honestly, I just want to do a good job for you and get you finished so I can move on to the next thing. I like my clients and enjoy my time with them. If you’re not getting that feeling, find somebody else.
I am co-owner of an S-corp so all the company’s taxes pass through to my personal tax return. Ugh. I started having our business accountant do our taxes long ago. I think I pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $500-$600 for him to do it and it’s WELL WORTH the money. I do not begrudge one penny of that money. One thing I’ve found is that the longer he does them, the easier it is – he knows us, has fewer questions, knows what I might have forgotten, knows about how much I should owe, etc.
I tried to use H&R Block when I first decided to have someone else do them, and I could tell the person I was working with just really didn’t know how to handle some of my stuff. So now I spend the money and I have never, ever regretted it.
That should say – the company’s *profits* pass through. And we personally pay the company’s taxes. It’s complicated. Accountant? Yes please.
We have used the same CPA for years and I have zero regrets about paying her. We have multiple things that make it difficult to do out own taxes (military and my husband’s home state is a tax-free state but where we live is not, own a rental property in a different state, at one point owned two properties, etc) and it’s just so much easier that she sends us an online portal, we upload everything based on questions generated by a decade of using it, we get our return at the end. Except this year we bought electric vehicles and she informed us that actually although all of our return is ready to go the government hasn’t finalized it’s forms for electric vehicle rebates so we just need to wait around until they get it together on their end. And I realize it’s “only” March but we are used to having this all finished by this point in the year, so it would be nice for the government to have their stuff figured out already.
(Not so) fun fact: the tax preparer companies (H&R Block, Turbo Tax, etc.) pay lobbyists millions to argue against what most other democratic countries do – the government sends you an estimate of what it thinks you owe (or are owed, in the case of a refund), and you review and disagree where applicable. This would be a much simpler system, and would destroy the major tax preparers’ business, since it depends on regular people throwing up their hands at the complexities and instead paying them.
That said, the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 allotted $15M to the Treasury Department to explore this option.
We started using an accountant a few years ago when our taxes became unbearably complicated. And it’s always stressful just as you say. Right now, I am fretting because I need to email the accountant with a question and I don’t know the right way to ask it and I’m afraid of the answer? like, worried that he will scold me or something? I don’t know; it doesn’t make any sense.
I have found that saying, “I have a question and I don’t know the right way to ask it, so here’s the scenario that’s confusing me, do you understand what I’m asking, because I sure don’t” has been helpful in medical situations. Do you feel comfortable putting it that way to your accountant?
This is brilliant and I am going to try it. Thank you!
This post came from inside my own head. I hate tax season.
I do ours, still. And I make my kids do their own. But my tax situation is pretty simple. I still put it off until April, regardless.
It blows my mind that I managed my own taxes as a total idiot at 21, when granted I had no property or children, BUT had three different W2s from 2 different states, was a resident of two separate states that year, + had student loans + first corporate job. And back then you filed your NJ taxes over the phone by “teletype” where you’d type in every value to a fully automated system using just your phone buttons. It took forever and was incredibly easy to mess up. Wild to think about. So glad I do not do my taxes now. SO GLAD.
My husband does our taxes but I maintain all the paperwork and until recently was the one who bought the software.
In my heart of hearts, I think getting all the paperwork together is the hard part and I am not at all sympathetic to the drama that accompanies filling in the forms. The man loves a crisis and invents them if there aren’t any ready to hand.
I’d be happy to give it all to a tax preparer to handle. But that would require him to find one before April, and that’s never going to happen.
I begged my husband for years to use a tax preparer for our fairly complicated taxes and then the one time he agreed to do so, the person we chose made TWO MISTAKES! We had to submit TWO amended tax returns! I’ll never get my husband to use a tax preparer again, despite the agony and confusion of the process.
This! Between parents’ taxes and my household’s I have complicated taxes (employed in one province, live in another, have my own side business of which I’m the sole proprietor – thank goodness I no longer have that second job with employment expenses or a rental property; plus my mom trades stocks and she and my stepdad split pension income – I won’t have to worry about this after I file his final return this year as he passed away at Easter). But I still do my own taxes, and WHY? Because the work is in amassing all the information anyway, and the one time I used an accountant he made a significant error anyway!
Tax season! We have used an incredibly wonderful tax guy for over 20 years. He moved out of state and he continued to do our taxes. Then last year, we got an email saying he was retiring. I was so upset, we had such a great system, and he was so efficient. So cue this year, I don’t know what to do. Do I try to find a new guy, or try to do them on my own? I could use his work as a template, but it has been so long since I did them. My goal is to figure this out in the next few weeks, but it is really stressing me out.
Perhaps he has someone to recommend?
I was lucky enough to have an acquaintance start a tax biz and in a position to support this new biz while not really needing it. Then I did really need it and we already were set. I moved from Texas to Colorado and they still do my taxes, just remotely. I find it very reassuring to know I’ve got someone I can count on and even ask her things thru the year.
We started using a tax preparer when I switched to contract work, and I loved her, and then she retired, and as a parting gift, she revealed that she’d screwed up on our taxes (three consecutive years) in a way that required us to deal with the Social Security Administration in person. I sound bitter, but in fact, it was amazing that she caught it, going over her books one last time before she was done, and she had stacks and stacks of paperwork that she’d dealt with and printed out, and everything we had to do was highlighted and spelled out, and she paid the fees we owed for the (small amount of) back taxes herself, so I was pretty sanguine about it, all things considered. My husband and I spent two hours at the local SSA office doing everything necessary to have it corrected, and they said “all good, but these things take time to be updated in the record, so give it up to a year before checking online.” Overachiever that I am, I gave it TWO years, checked, and discovered they’d only corrected one year of income. The other two years were still wrong. I’ve been putting off dealing with it for MONTHS AND MONTHS, but it’s so horrifying to contemplate, and we now have a new CPA who knows nothing about it, and I get sick every year around this time remembering I need to deal with it. And then I don’t. So.
All that to say, if I have a fear about using a tax preparer, it’s that he’s screwing something up that’s going to come back to bite us, especially since every year it seems like we’re getting more money back than we should. Which is better than our first two years being married, before we had a house and kids, when we owed the most obscene amount of money because of my husband’s multiple part-time jobs that assumed he didn’t also have a full-time job and failed to take any taxes out of his paychecks. Those were fun times, bursting into tears in front of the H&R Block preparer (proud owner of literally 14 cats).
I hate tax season.
I’m an accountant who hated tax class in college and does not do anything related to taxes in my work.
I do my own taxes because I’m single and have very few deductions or anything. But I literally fight doing them because almost every year I pretty much break even. Which is the actual goal. But what a waste of time and energy (and $50 for TurboTax) to find out the IRS owes me $40 or I owe my state $20.
Geez, when you put it that way, the whole tax evasion thing starts to sound a lot more logical. I fully endorse you using a tax person, but I am also right on board with thinking the tax person would judge me. We have a close friend who’s a financial planner, and by all accounts a very good, scrupulously careful-with-everyone’s-money one, and some of our other friends use him, and like NO, I would rather DIE, the only people that get to judge how dumb I am with money are relatively anonymous strangers.