TurboTax by far, looking for a CPA.
Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
31–40 of 64 posts
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#32Here we have a little program called e-tax [1] that we can download. It'll download a whole heap of pre-fill info for you [2] such as wages earned and tax paid throughout the year, your medicare (our dirty socialist public healthcare) info and any private health insurance you may or may not have (since that affects your tax contributions), any share dividends/transactions, bank savings interest accrued, etc etc.
You then just go through and answer a bunch of questions, entering relevant info wherever you need to and at the end you press submit. The info you enter essentially amounts to any deduction claims you want to make, plus any other niche pieces of info you may have to supply.
It covers the vast majority of people who don't have crazy complex tax returns. You can still do it by hand, or pay someone else to do it, but for most people it is an hour or two long exercise to do it via e-tax and at the end your return is either directly deposited into your bank account or you receive a bill to pay your tax owing.
It's nice and easy and makes tax return for most of us a pretty painless affair.
[1]: http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/E-... [2]: http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/In...
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a US/EU citizen that has stock options in a start-up based in the UK, where I am a permanent resident. I am absolutely clueless on whether or not I need to file something...
'If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.' http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/U.S.-...
Unless there's a tax treaty between the US and the country where you reside.
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#34Fun fact: the US government has the ability to tell you how much you should be paying in taxes, and to pre-fill your tax returns. However this has been prevented by lobbyists from the tax preparation industry http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100124/1836527884.shtml
They do it anyway. I've been surprised by how many times the IRS have told me about mistakes...and then send me a check since I paid too much.
NYS actually sent me a letter saying I missed this and that credit, refund check enclosed. Pretty crazy.
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#35curious
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#36I used TurboTax in the past, since a few years I'm using a tax advisor as this is essentially cheaper. With TurboTax I always ended up being not 100% sure if I'm eligible for certain deductions. So I could either not claim them (and potentially lose a lot of money), claim them (and in case I wasn't allowed to claim them also potentially lose lots of money), or spend lots of time researching the law. With a tax advisor I just describe my situation, pay a relatively low fee, and don't have to care about those things.
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#37It's a shame ReadyReturn[1] is so nerfed (due to intense lobbying from Intuit) - as otherwise it'd be pretty great. 1: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/readyreturn/ A federally-based solution for this would be ideal; the government is already well-aware of the relevant data. The only reason we have to do any work at all is because of the bizarre vagaries and loopholes of the tax code (and the gigantic amount of lobbying from t…
Can you please elaborate a bit on the imposed constraints that nerf it?
[deleted]
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#38It was H&R Block until tonight.
I started my 2013 filing in H&R but hadn't submitted. I stumbled on this post and saw all the votes for TurboTax and re-entered my info into TurboTax and it saved me 5K.
Even the UI and help sections are nicer in TurboTax than H&R.
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#39Fun fact: the US government has the ability to tell you how much you should be paying in taxes, and to pre-fill your tax returns. However this has been prevented by lobbyists from the tax preparation industry http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100124/1836527884.shtml
"the US government has the ability to tell you how much you should be paying in taxes, and to pre-fill your tax returns"
This is only true if you have a relatively straightforward tax return. Once you itemize deductions, there are all sorts of things the federal government doesn't know about, like how much real estate tax you paid, how much you gave to charity, what your medical and miscellaneous expenses were, etc. They only know about what's on your W-2, 1099s, K-1s, etc.
For the really simple tax returns (like 1040-EZ), I think there's already an option to have the IRS compute your tax for you.
Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
'If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.' http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/U.S.-...
Unless there's a tax treaty between the US and the country where you reside.
This is not relevant, you still have to file and can deduct your foreign paid taxes in any event. The tax treaty becomes relevant when you are working in the states on behalf of your foreign employer (china and USA really needs a better tax treaty).