#036 — Taxes Are Done! TurboTax Review
Finally Did Our Taxes
I finally completed our taxes. I had eyeballed our tax returns about two months ago, but since my initial sketch showed we’d probably owe upwards of $2,500, I decided avoidance was my best option until I felt like dealing with it!
Lucky for me I waited. Since I was hanging around Twitter at the right time, I won a free online copy of Turbo Tax. Thanks to Jim Wang (@bargainr) who blogs at Bargaineering, for the promotional code!
The Verdict
Well, looks like we owe the IRS $1,288.00. I hate to owe money, but ultimately, that’s FAR better than owing $2,500.00+! Turns out that in my original “eyeball” test, I didn’t factor into account that we can deduct our real estate taxes, along with some other minor deductions. All-in-all, I’m satisfied with this amount.
Tax Tip
In e-filing our taxes, TurboTax gave us the option to electronically pay our tax balance on any date up to and including April 15th.
Here’s my tip: if you have your money in a high-interest checking account, set your automatic deduction to occur on April 15th, and keep your money earning interest up until the last possible date. It may only buy you a happy meal, but hey — it’ll be a free happy meal!
How’d You Like TurboTax?
This is the third year in a row that we’ve used TurboTax. Every year, we consider hiring a CPA to do our taxes, but ultimately, I just don’t think our taxes are complicated enough yet to justify hiring someone else to prepare our taxes.
I used the Deluxe package, valued at $49.95. In Texas we have no state income tax, so all I had was federal taxes to worry about.
I’ll keep this short & sweet — I love the online access they provide now. They’ll also keep your information stored online for next year. The process was very user-friendly and pretty easy. The only issues I ran into where I didn’t feel TurboTax didn’t do a great job explaining what they were looking for was when they requested the “basis” level for gifts to charities; but I did figure it out using their online forums and a bit of Google searching.
I have not used any of their more complicated software for small businesses or rental property issues, so I cannot attest to how TurboTax stands up to those with a bit more tax complications in their life. But for the relatively simple, I thought it did a great job.
Have you used TurboTax or another tax software program? Give me a mini-review below. I’m interested in your comments.
photo by Howdy, I’m H. Michael Karshis