The price of tax preparation

Passed by a local tax preparation place that has a sign out front "$49 - short form".

WHAT? $49 to fill out the short form. Dang, I should go into the the tax prep business and only deal in short forms.

 

I do hope none of you are paying $49 for someone to fill out the short form for you. If you don't want to do the paper version, go online to one of the many places and pay about $15 to fill out and submit the form. Actually $15 is what I'm paying to complete and submit my long form 1040.

 

Did ours online a couple of days ago with Turbo Tax and it was completely free.  They do try to get you to upgrade, but it isn't mandatory.  E-filing was free.

I had always done my own until we became self employed.  I was worried about all the in's & out's so I hired a tax preparer.  She charged me $275 and simply plugged in the numbers I pulled together.  When I looked the taxes over & saw what she had done I was really annoyed.  It wasn't her fault, but sheesh what a bunch of money for me to do all the work, LOL.

$49 for the 1040EZ?  I do my brother's every year and he buys me a couple of drinks.  Guess what bud?  The price just went up!  LOL

WashingtonChou:

$49 for the 1040EZ?  I do my brother's every year and he buys me a couple of drinks.  Guess what bud?  The price just went up!  LOL

At least get an appetizer to eat with the drinks LOL

DH works for HR Block part time this year- ours was free. DD was $17-( $20 with a 15 % coupon). we are going to be geting LR furniture and new mattresses here and a laptop.

i wish i was smart enough to do taxes professional. i do ours and have most of the years. the only two years i didn't was when i got 6 yrs worth of backpay from SSD and when i sold my house i inherited. ended up not having to pay taxes on either of the situtations. the last one, we went to a guy that has been doing them for years and had i not of known what i did about an inheriance, we would jof had to pay taxes on the house.  i ended up going to a CPA and i was right. wonder how many people he screwed up!

as for the free filing.  this year there was only 2 that we qualified for because of my dh being 60. i had never heard of either one but tried both.  i got confused because of the  pension part. so i decided to go thru HR BLOCK's taxcut and it was simple as can be. i paid the 14.95 to use their softwear but the filing was free. got the refund in 8 days.

the HR BLOCK people in walmart was going to charge my son $48 to do a 1040X because his new wife didn't remember a W-2.  i said no way and got the printed instructions and did it myself. the woman at HR went over it for me free and said it was ok, but she did miss something. but i did it first using the instructions online.  once i got the printed version and it got quiet, i did it.

sandee

 

I was charged 176.00 by HR Bock this year to do my taxes because we used the long form....Can someone recommend an easy way to do it online next year? I would probably need the long form.

(176.00 and I get back 600.00....sheesh!) 

use taxcut.com --- it's run by HR Block. It asks you all the questions and is very easy to follow. Starts at $14.95 for the long form. You don't pay until you are ready to submit your taxes.

 

 

 Thanks so much for the websit,Treehuggin'!

 Wow....I have always done ours myself...other than one year when we sold some stock shares, then had AARP do it, lol...for free.

Anyway this year, already filled them out, and got back both Federal and state.  One thing I do request is the direct deposit into our checking, and that speeds things up....This year it only took maybe 3 weeks between sending them in and getting the refunds back...not a big amount but enough for hubby to buy him new work uniforms and boots, lol. 

Barbara 

I did our state and federal both for free. I used TurboTax Easy for federal (that includes free e-filing, and then did free filing for my state return on my state revenue website. E'filing was free there too.

dh does ours on computer.....this year he used turbo tax online....

We have to file with 2 states and file long form.

It cost us $100.00