Do you do your own taxes, or, use an accountant ?

30 comments

1. I do it online using FreeTaxUSA and it takes about 30 minutes

   We also pay as we earn, the tax return is about letting the government know about any extra income or deductions we qualified for over the year, to settle the bill so to speak.

2. I pay a CPA currently as my taxes are a bit complicated and my time has value.

   Most people can do their taxes in under an hour.

   There are free digital services that work great for most people, but complaining is easier and more fun on reddit so that’s what people do instead.

3. My “worst case” of filing taxes involved a year I had a home sale, capital gains, a few miscellaneous credits,, an accidental misuse of HSA funds to report, and a gift return to file.

   Even that only took about maybe 2 or so hours of work one weekend once I had all documents available

4. So how do people with itemized deductions and a bunch of other stuff do their taxes?

5. So people in the UK don’t pay taxes on stock dividends?

6. For most Americans, doing their taxes takes less than half an hour. Taxes are usually deducted from paychecks and “doing your taxes” is, for most people, filing paperwork to get a partial refund back from the government.

7. We have income and payroll (SS, Medicare) taken out of our paychecks too.

   But not everyone works a job as part of a larger company. Many people own their own businesses, are independent contractors, have side hustles, make charitable donations, own their own houses, have income coming in from savings accounts and other sources. The government doesn’t necessarily know all of this information togetherat the same time.

   Also sometimes the government takes too much out of the taxes, so then they owe you money. Or they take too little and then you owe them.

   For most Americans it takes like an hour or two every year to get things settled. Last year I did it on my phone, and the tax service even already had my W2 on file. It was super easy.

8. I own a couple of businesses so an accountant does my taxes.

9. Accountant.

10. I used an accountant once in my nearly 30 years of filing income taxes. It usually takes me about an hour. I also use the time to review my personal finances in a broader sense. Income tax filing isn’t a big deal for most Americans, it’s mostly a trope and people get unreasonably vocally upset about them for different reasons.

11. Me. And it’s just simple math. Look up the forms to do your taxes on. It’s really easy.

12. We do pay as we go the end-of-year taxes are balancing the books because your employer doesn’t know about any other income, deductions, or credits.

13. I always did my own, until I married into a family of accountants.

14. I used to do it myself but now I pay a small fee to do it with TurboTax’s system. Takes about an hour or less depending on interruptions.

15. My wife and I have kind of complex finances. I not only have a well-paying full-time gig, but own a side business. She’s a CPA with a finance degree and the CFO of a commercial real estate firm, so we have bought into in various properties.

    We don’t do our taxes for a couple of reasons. 1) While my wife is an awfully good accountant, she’s not a tax accountant, especially given the complexity of our return’ and 2) If the IRS ever decided to perform an audit, we would want to have our accountant act as the intermediary between us and them.

16. So we have a bunch of different taxes, a lot of em are taken directly out of our paychecks for us, and other things just get added on at the register.

    At this time of the year the big ones on american’s minds are our yearly income tax. That’s our big doozy that we are mostly responsible for. There’s a whole spectrum of thing. Some do their own some don’t. For most people there is an easy form that is really all they need. You literally put in the numbers, its called easy for a reason.

    However, many will opt to use computer software or a place like H&R block which have accountants that do it for you (for a fee). These are very popular to because most come with benefit of the doubt coverages where if they mess something up, you aren’t held accountable. many like it just for ease of mind.

17. I pay someone to do it for me. It would take maybe an hour to do it myself, but I’d much rather play games than run numbers. ;p

18. I do my own taxes, my taxes are pretty straight forward. It takes about a half hour.

    My mom is an accountant. Even though she doesn’t do taxes in her current line of work, she used to do them at work. She does my parents taxes, which are more complicated. She would also do their business taxes when we owned a farm. That would take significantly longer, and would be something that a lot of people hire someone to do.

19. We have PAYE too, but we still have to file a return in April.

    It is more complicated than the UK, but not as complicated as people from the UK think, unless you have multiple income streams and/or capital gains/losses and itemized deductions and all that.

    Basically, if you are single without children and just work a regular job, there is very little to do as long as you don’t overclaim deductions to have less taken out of your pay during the year.

20. I do my own, it takes a little bit longer as I have a few 1099-DIV from investment accounts, and unfortunately this year I also got a 1099-K from Reverb do to selling some amps and pedals.

21. I do my own and it takes about 30 minutes. The vast majority of us also get taxes taken directly out of our paychecks, but the government doesn’t know what extra deductions/credits we will qualify for, so we settle up at the end of the year. For example, the government took the correct amount of tax out of my paycheck this year, but they don’t know that I bought an electric car and therefore qualify for a $7,500 tax credit. I put that on my taxes this year so that the IRS can refund me that $7,500.

22. I pay TurboTax to do it, it costs… I don’t know actually, 50 dollars? Takes like an hour.

23. We have money taken out, then ~~take a long confusing quiz~~ fill out the paperwork to find out whether they took out too much or not enough. I pay to use an online service to enter my information, and I suspect the majority of Americans do, too.

24. When I was single and I was doing my own taxes, it would take maybe an hour total, and only because the free Turbotax software would make me start over from scratch twice at a minimum.

    Now I just hire an accountant because my wife and I are doing pretty well and we’ve had a bunch of life events that affect our taxes – bought a house, had a kid, family leave, etc. It’s nice to have the backing of an accounting firm made of actual people, and not the faceless customer care team from some software company. I’ve never been audited or anything, but it’s worth it for the peace of mind. We pay like $250 a year to have our taxes filed, and all we need to do is have a zoom meeting with “Eric” for 30 minutes after we send him all the documents he requests.

25. I use an accountant. We have a few life circumstances that I prefer someone else do it for us. It’s pricey but they have served us well. Next year things maybe simpler (not simple) so I’ll just use a tax preparer which is different and cheaper.

26. The US isn’t a flat rate. We pay taxes based on our combined income for the year less any deductions.

    This all can’t be captured through payroll

    For example other sources of income outside of payroll could be
    – rental income if you’re a landlord
    – interest income
    – unemployment income
    – gambling winnings

    And more
    Your job does take taxes out of your paycheck but is might be too much or too little depending on other factors like additional income listed above or additional deductions listed below

    At the end of the year all of your taxable income is added up and you deduct qualifying expenses to get to your adjusted gross income which is your true taxable income

    Then there’s deductions and credits like paying for daycare, that give you money back

    It calculates to what you still owe in tax or what you are owed back

    This is all very simple to do. For the average American they will do it themselves in about a half hour. There’s lots of softwares like turbo tax that easily guide you to enter all your information and then does the calculation and handles payment

    For businesses and people with more complicated returns they go to an accountant

27. I do my own. It takes me less than 30 minutes. I submitted my taxes January 27th, and got my return February 6th.

28. I do my own personal taxes, but I have a CPA help prepare my business’ taxes.

29. I handle the taxes for my job. The accounting firm also does personal taxes and they give me a ridiculous discount. So I just have them do mine while they’re at it. I’m confident I could do it on my own but I like having the extra confidence of having a pro do it. If I didn’t have this existing relationship I’d probably just do it myself like most of my friends do.

30. Am accountant and do my own because they are simple. If I ever get a more complex tax return, I will hire someone else to do them