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I hate doing taxes

A.Nonymous

A.Nonymous

Extreme Android User
I don't think I really need to add more to my bitch than that. I'm a college educated, reasonably intelligent human being and digging through piles of paperwork trying to put all the numbers in the right boxes so they end up right is a PITA. I'm a relatively honest citizen and the code is so dang complicated I can't honestly tell you if I'm paying what I should be. Sad thing is the professionals can't either. Ugh.
 
Do what I did for years and still do (somewhat). Purchase quicken. Catagorize all of your expenditures and keep track of them all throughout the year. Put cash receipts in an accordian file throughout the year so you don't have to do it last minute.

With everything pre-catagorized, use turbo tax to talk you through your taxes. Its really easy. I use quicken now, but have hired a CPA who does them for me. :) I'm older (and wealthier). :p
 
A couple of years ago, an independent group took a relatively average tax return (no Schedule C, no rental properties, no winnings or catastrophic losses from natural disaster) and gave it to 5 accountants, 5 tax preparation services and 5 IRS auditors.

Result: 15 different returns. :eek:
 
i am in Arlington, Texas... i work at a tax company.

i can help you complete your tax return and e-file it for you... and can give you all a discounted price. I can help all those that live in Texas.

PM me.. and we can talk.
 
I'm an Accountant...and I hate TAX. I KNOW how to do them and all the theories behind what happens but don't ask me to do your tax for you. I hate doing it for myself. :@
 
Roze said:
I'm an Accountant...and I hate TAX. I KNOW how to do them and all the theories behind what happens but don't ask me to do your tax for you. I hate doing it for myself. :@
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It's only because you do it for a living that you hate it so much. :p
 
Roze said:
I'm an Accountant...and I hate TAX. I KNOW how to do them and all the theories behind what happens but don't ask me to do your tax for you. I hate doing it for myself. :@
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Pretty please with sugar on top? How about with a couple of $50's on top ... ;)
 
I'm a single guy w/no dependents. That has to be the easiest in the world to do. Problem is I do this foolish thing called saving for retirement and I've also been known to give to charities/non-profits from time to time. I also have savings accounts that pay me interest and I have to count this as income as well. There's no more than $50 total for the whole year in interest, but the government wants their pound of flesh from it. I have to chase down all of these places for reports on my charitable giving. Then there's the mortgage company as well since I can write off my interest on my home loan. And I'm sure I'm missing something.

It just seems way, way, way more complicated than it should be. If businesses made it this difficult for people to pay them, they'd go out of business. But I have no option to go to somewhere else for police, fire, ems, road maintenance, etc..... so I must use this convoluted system that no one truly understands.

A few years ago I got a worker's comp injury settlement. I talked to two or three CPAs. I got two or three different answers on whether I needed to report it as income or not. No one knew for sure. In a perfect world you'd open up the tax code and look it up. Problem is the code is several volumes and no one on the planet has read the whole thing or possibly could so it's impossible to find a definitive answer. Since the penalty for not reporting is literally going to jail I ended up reporting income that I may not have had to report and paid taxes on money that I may not have had to pay taxes on. Any chance I'll ever get that back? Not a one. The code is insanely complicated for a simple task.
 
A.Nonymous said:
In a perfect world you'd open up the tax code and look it up. Problem is the code is several volumes and no one on the planet has read the whole thing or possibly could so it's impossible to find a definitive answer.
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Not only that, but the tax code changes every year, so you have to keep up with what is different and what stayed the same, which is impossible for the professionals. The poor Jane and Joe America don't stand a chance.

Since the penalty for not reporting is literally going to jail I ended up reporting income that I may not have had to report and paid taxes on money that I may not have had to pay taxes on. Any chance I'll ever get that back? Not a one.
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Not necessarily. A couple of years ago, the IRS notified me that I owed some ridiculous amount of back taxes because when I filed for the year, I had accidentally missed one of the schedules (listing profits and losses from investment trades). They used the sale of each investment as reported by the broker as 100% profit without regard to the initial cost. In any event, I handed the whole thing off to my lawyer who discovered that not only didn't I owe the IRS anything, but because the market was not particularly great that year, I had shown a loss which entitled me to money back. Of course my lawyer's fee was almost the exact amount of the refund ... hmmmm ;)

If you can verify the your worker's comp was non-reportable, you can file an amended return for that year and get it back.
 
I could probably figure out how to do them on my own, but I like being able to give everything to my accountant and having him in my corner in case the IRS comes as knockin.

BTW, thanks to all you accountants in this post. I don't know how you find time to be on AF this time of year.:)
 
lunatic59 said:
If you can verify the your worker's comp was non-reportable, you can file an amended return for that year and get it back.
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The key word is If I can verify. I couldn't. I called several CPAs like I mentioned earlier. One of our clients at work is a CPA and I spoke with him as well as two others that were recommended to me. One said I didn't have to report it. Another said that I likely did. Another said that some of it might be reportable and some not. All of them sounded like intelligent guys who knew what they were doing, but I don't think any of them would've been able to point to the place in the code backing up their advice. To expect them to would've been unrealistic though.
 
A.Nonymous said:
The key word is If I can verify. I couldn't. I called several CPAs like I mentioned earlier. One of our clients at work is a CPA and I spoke with him as well as two others that were recommended to me. One said I didn't have to report it. Another said that I likely did. Another said that some of it might be reportable and some not. All of them sounded like intelligent guys who knew what they were doing, but I don't think any of them would've been able to point to the place in the code backing up their advice. To expect them to would've been unrealistic though.
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I collected unemployment briefly many years ago and I know that I had to report it, but it wasn't taxable. If it's a significant amount, you might want to consult an attorney who handles estates as they have to be proficient in the past and current tax codes, and have lackeys to do the research for them.
 
i did my taxes the manual way once. Once. btw, that means doing all your calculations via the worksheets.

Then i gave Turbotax a try. Much better. Have the software do the grunt work.

My returns are probably above average in complexity. wage income, interest, dividends, capital gains, rental property, and charitable donation. The most annoying part is figuring capital gains, because your cost basis is typically not supplied on the 1099-B. So I have to dig through my records to see what my cost was. Some of these investments are decades old, so it sucks having to dig through old files. Then there's the case where you buy more of something, which makes figuring your cost basis even more complicated.

That's why I'm not surprised you can get multiple returns using multiple accountants. It's easy to use arbitrary values or be lazy when figuring some of this stuff.
 
I do my stuff on a web site that I've been using for several years now. You can e-file federal for free and state is like $10-15. Don't have to buy any software that I'll put on my computer, use once and never ever touch again and the next year it's out of date. The site is really great. Easy to use. Completely free except for the state filing. It's just a matter of getting all the numbers and plugging them into the right boxes.

I've got capital gains to figure out too, but it's a PITA to get that information. My dad is a stock broker and opened an account in my name when I was a child. It's still open. I literally have no say in how the money there is invested. Since it's my dad I can't just call him up and tell him to give me the money so I can invest it. He put all the money that is in there in himself. But since it's in my name I've got figure it into my taxes. I would love nothing more than to just close the dang thing and either he can take all the money himself (which I have no real problems with since he put it in originally) or I can take it and toss it in my Roth. Family makes things messy.
 
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