OK, I remember the Turbo Tax thread, and here it is coming upon mid-March and it's time for me to call for an appointment go to my tax attorney. He's in Raleigh and I'm not feeling like taking time out of my hectic schedule to go there on a couple hour break. For those of you who did the Turbo Tax Home and Business, I have a ? (I checked the website and it is a bit vague) Are there places in the program to report sales of stock? What I mean is Is the program complete? I'm nervous about this as it is about 850.00 cheaper than using my usual preparer - I'm reading it as costing me 79.00 plus 29.00 for state by doing it online - did I read it correctly? Any opinions or advice would be appreciated.
Yes. As complete as the tax law allows. That is to say, the tax code is so complicated, no one person knows it all, but TuboTax, by virture of having several programmers, knows more than any one person can, but who knows if it is 100% complete. I can't say, I've never done it online, I've always used the one installed on my home computer. (Deluxe + State - $39) You're welcome.
Zoo, using Turbo Tax for the business? :ack: I don't know, I personally wouldn't. That scares me. My CPA is freaking awesome. I e-mail him my QB for him to do quarterly taxes and I dropped off my year end stuff for him to start working on. Love him!!
You can always prepare your return on turbo tax and have your tax preparer review it. I worked for a CPA firm preparing taxes and we did that for several clients. To answer the Turbo tax question, the home based versions for preparing taxes are just the same as what the professionals use, however they tend to be more user friendly with interview style questions. If you know what you're doing you can just enter the info on the forms. If you do try to prepare your return yourself, make sure you check it against your prior year return just to make sure you didn't leave something out.
I have entered the sale of stocks in Turbo Tax before with no problems. It mimics the forms you get at the end of the year word for word, you just enter the line info and it calculates if you have to claim the sales as income or not depending on other info you entered in. I have found TurboTax to be a complete program, and as someone else said up here, it's the same on the professionals use. Don't be scared of it. You can enter your info into the program and don't have to pay until the very end when you sctually file. If you decide you don't like it, you don't have to file with it. Good Luck!!
Thanks all - got my stuff all together and on a quiet day next week when I have a good three hrs off in a row to concentrate, I'll take a shot at it.
