Body!!!

Yes, I think you all can do it.

Turbo Tax, TaxAct.. they walk you through all of that. msn has a great article on the types of people that can do it themselves, and people that should probably use a pro.

http://money.msn.com/tax-preparation/should-you-do-your-o...

You should be able to do them yourselves. If you are really paranoid do them yourself and let your accountant do them one more time. If they match you know you have nothing to worry about.

You can ABSOLUTELY do your own taxes. We've been doing ours for years and it is so easy (even though we have a business, investments, stock losses, etc.). I highly recommend Turbo Tax software - it walks you through everything in such good detail that you can't go wrong.

But do remember that you're not trying to get big returns really. You're trying to pay the lowest amount of taxes. If you get a big return it means is that you had too much withheld during the year. We almost never get more than a few hundred dollars as a return, but we also don't have a lot deducted during the year. Turbo Tax or another software will tell you how to minimize your paycheck deductions and still not need to pay taxes at the end of the year.

E.:

Even with company buy outs and $180K in profit, we have ALWAYS done our own taxes. We use Turbo Tax and have NEVER had a problem. Buy the software and do it yourself.

Your returns are "oh so great" because of your with holdings. If you want give the government a free loan - then increase the deductions with holdings on your W2s.

If you are doing DRIPs (having profits from your investments being reinvested) your investments should be easy to do. Even if they are "hard" Turbo Tax will walk you right through them.

We do ours by ourself. So easy. Turbo Tax walks you through every step, you can't go wrong!

I think you could easily do it on-line. I recommend TaxAct, you can put your information in and you don't pay anything until the end when you file. They have a free one and deluxe package for $9.95. My mother who has more investments than I and is a homeowner did the free and still received a return. All you have to do is answer questions. Also, let me tell you, I use to go to those places like H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, then did Turbo Tax, but TaxAct is the exact same is Turbo and you don't have to pay as much to file. I used to pay hundreds when I went to them, not Turbo, but one year I put the same information in Turbo Tax and TaxAct, was getting the same exact refund, but Turbo Tax was going to cost $30 more than TaxAct... that's when I changed...

I've always done my own taxes. Even when I got married and bought a house in the same year. Even last year when we pulled the original contribution out of my husband's roth IRA. Even when we had my daughter.

When I was single and before e-file, I did my taxes by hand and then either filed by phone or mailed them in. Since e-file, I've always used H&R Block. A few reviews/comparisons I've read online say that the H&R Block At Home system (online) is a bit easier to follow than Turbo Tax. And it's always been free.

We've had no problems with Turbo Tax past 10 years or so.

:)

We have done our own for years. It's really easy, even with lots of itemizations and deductions.

My husband has used turbo tax for years, and recently has switched to H&R Block software because it was on sale. He compared a co-worker's return (she had it done by a professional) with the results on turbo tax, and it came out identically, to the penny. He thinks that is the program the pros use.

Yes, you can absolutely do them yourself! I've used both H&R Block and Turbo Tax and have a slight preference for H&R Block because it's a bit clearer to understand. But even with our many deductions (mortgage, kids), investments, IRAs, and my business (self employed), the software really does make it easy. Plus Amazon has has the software every year in Jan. for about $30 during a one day gold box deal, much cheaper than the usual $90 (?).

My husband has always paid an accountant over $200 a year to do it and the last 2 years he has screwed us and we have been audited now twice. Both times, we owed the IRS more than our tax guy said we owed them and we had to dish out the extra funds? Why? Because it was our job to double check what we paid the guy to do. We signed off on the paper work agreeing that he did it correctly.

We now had to pay the guy another $175 to ammend the last 2 years so that it can be sent in correctly for the last time. The IRS now owes us over $6,000 (that God!)... but now, they are triple checking every number and it may take months for them to refund us.

We have since stopped paying a so called professional CPA RUDY (Romeoville) and have gone thru Turbo Tax and saved lots of money.

My husband does our through TurboTax. That said, he is a numbers man, MBA, accounting, business and he knows what he is doing down to the last details. We STILL have our porfessional tax counsel sign off on it before we e-file.

Think of it this way... you DIY to save $200 .... so what if you error and end up with penalties or fees which can be WAY over $200. Don't mess with the IRS.

now if you are a numbers person and understand the process you are probably ok but our tax counsel double checks ours and he does all of our business taxes.

Doing your taxes yourself isn't a big deal! YOu can use a free service like taxact.com and it walks you through the process and even files the federal return for free.

I do our taxes. I've never used Turbo Tax, because there are free forms through the irs website. They also have all the instructions (pdf files), so when I don't know what they're asking for, I just look it up on one of those forms. Those forms explain every single line. They are all number, so if you're looking at line 38, just go to line 38 in the instructions and it explains it.

I really need to do our taxes, so I'm hoping I'll get it done Friday afternoon!