I did a little research and found Turbo Tax was rated the best. If you do your own taxes with your mystery shopping, what program do you use? How much did you pay for all programs *portions) needed to successfully do your taxes? Any difficulty in preparing your own taxes with the programs?

I used to do my own taxes but with mystery shopping I was going to a tax preparer and it always seem to cost $350 or close to that.

I use turbo tax. I have done my own taxes for ever. Tubo tax is around 60.00

I use Turbo Tax.

Turbo Tax, hands down the best. $60-70 depending on what other income you have such as rental in come. It will walk you through everything!

ETA At that price you also get to download one state tax return for your home state.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/22/2016 01:37PM by walesmaven.

Definitely TurboTax. I get the 'Home and Business' which is right at $80. That one has the Schedule C. And indeed it has 1 free state download plus you can do 5 E-files with it. I use it every year to do family and a few friends' returns because once they have gathered their information it is just easy data entry.

I use Turbo, too. I qualify for the free version, which I access directly off the IRS.gov website. I think the limit is generous, if you're single and earn less than the limit, it's free.

Turbo Tax for sure

Thank you everyone! Okay. I can do this all online, right? I just go to turbotax.com and pay for it and a link is provided to get started?
Thanks again!

I am so tired of paying $350.00+ to hire someone to do my taxes!

You could do it that way, though my personal preference is to have TurboTax only house my completed return as they transmit it to IRS. I purchase the CD every year and all my files are saved on my own equipment to pull into the following year's return with any carryforwards. I got mine from Amazon with their free 2 day shipping (as a Prime member) around Thanksgiving so I could make a first pass at my taxes to see how much I should spend for office supplies and equipment before 12/31 to minimize taxes. I save and backup all tax returns done as well as pdfs of all paperwork used to prepare the returns and keep the paper copy of the return and documents for only 5 years (but have the electronic versions of returns going back to 1994).

Thanks Flash!

Are you saying I could go in there now and start working on my taxes, save the information and come back to it when I start receiving my 1099's and (well no W-2's this year)...If so, that would be great! Do you have a "cloud" so to speak because what if (God forbid) something happened to your computer. I think you are saying you save it on a flash drive?

Right now this computer (a laptop) has TurboTax installed and it was last updated yesterday. I worked on one return yesterday that we are also trying to complete for year end tax planning and the return files are saved to a thumb drive temporarily. Once I have the documentation ready for a real return there will be 2 thumb drives in my machine and each 'save' will be sent to each thumb drive. Once a return is completed it will be emailed to the taxpayer for checking before it is e-filed. Once the okay (with any changes needed) is given, the actual .tax2016 file will be emailed to the taxpayer along with the pdf of what was actually filed and the pdf of all forms for them to preserve in case they want to do their own return next year or take it somewhere to be done or some disaster befalls my computer/backups. Those same files are saved, with all documentation, to a thumb drive that has nothing but 2016 returns and dropped in the safe, they will be saved to my desktop machine and backed up to the external drive that is kept in my safety deposit box. Data loss is a terrible thing, data being compromised by hacking is almost as bad. At no time will the data be saved to a laptop because those can 'grow legs' and walk away. No intelligent thief would steal my by now ancient desktop which was upgraded to Win XP years ago but can upgrade no further (so TurboTax this year will not run on it, but that doesn't stop the machine from being a useful file storage unit).

Thanks Flash! You are so organized.

I think Turbotax has a great marketing dept. They made such a product that everyone wanted to use it and largely have pushed others out of the way. Now that they are the 500 lb gorilla, they are starting to jack up the price by nickel/diming you with various 'extra' forms that you didn't have to pay for the year before. So now you're locked into a product that has it's hooks into you good. Look into the amount of lobbying tax-prep software firms do at the federal level just to keep their industry profiting. It's capitalism at it's finest.

I've been using Turbo Tax for years. I don't use any additional programs with it, just the Turbo Tax. I always order it from Amazon and get a CD and I do the taxes for everybody in my family and help them file electronically. So far I've never had to pay extra for any "extra" forums.

If you would only fill out 1040EZ, then it should be simple and free. If you have bought/sold stocks (like I have) they now want to push you into a more expensive option. I didn't pay for whatever Schedule stocks were in 2014 taxes, but 2015 they made me. Costs are creeping in now that they have the market share.

@Jay C wrote:

I've been using Turbo Tax for years. I don't use any additional programs with it, just the Turbo Tax. I always order it from Amazon and get a CD and I do the taxes for everybody in my family and help them file electronically. So far I've never had to pay extra for any "extra" forums.

A few years ago I stopped registering my copy so that I stopped getting about 20# of junk mail plus a bucket full of emails a year. The software and updates work fine without registering. I usually install on all current computers in the house. I am limited by the number of E-files that come with the CD and one year by mistake I found that each installed copy apparently carries a full limit of E-files because the number of filings are by that particular computer. So no longer do I mail the returns that have no refund due.

I use a Ouija board and hope for the best!

When I do my own taxes, I use the forms and instructions pubs at irs.gov.