Taxes: How do I does them?

I'm the worst at understanding paperwork, fine print and legal terms. Ask me to read a Credit Card agreement and my head will explode, yet somehow if you give me a TV or amplifier manual it's like I'm reading the most beautiful prose. Weird, I know.

But I've always had somebody do my taxes for me. My "guy" the last two years was pretty good at getting me good amounts, but he was just somebody my Dad knew whom I paid fifty bucks each time to do it. I don't know how to get in touch with him now, and I don't know if I'd even want to since the fiasco last year of him messing up a digit on my bank account for the direct deposit and me almost not getting any tax return AT ALL.

So I've got three W-2s, a 1099G (for unemployment I collected), a 1098-E (student loan interest paid), and a few assorted things I want to try to write off (stuff I had to buy for work, maybe gas/supplies used for looking for work? The guy that did them last year for me said he put stuff like that in there for me, and it obviously worked).

Do I need to go into an H&R Block and pay them the sixty bucks or whatever it is to get this done, and could I expect to get a decent return with them handling it? Or is it easy enough to do yourself, perhaps online or with a kit that they mail to you or something?

plz halp.

I've always done it online, and it's pretty straightforward and cheaper than 50 dollars.

There's usually a variety of payment levels: the free kind that doesn't give much of any advice or suggestions and is for the most simple of taxes, the more expensive levels that can handle more complex tax forms and gives some additional advice/suggestions about various write offs, and then the most expensive that is more of everything.

I'd suggest finding an online service, whichever one, and buying the middle of the road service (probably 25-35 dollars).

I believe you can do TurboTax online for free for Federal, and then like $50 or whatever for State.

Its pretty easy to do, though I've never had to do anything with write-offs and unemployment.

YOu just get the forms and follow the instructions. It's not hard.

lol I pay someone $75 to do my taxes.


see also: simply filling out the fucking tax forms when I accepted my job confused the hell out of me, and i'm pretty sure I did something wrong, as NOTHING was deducted from my paychecks for federal taxes. wtf?!

Give it to someone to do it and then reap the rewards.

Just did them. Thought Turbo Tax was free all the way, but like tugger said above (and I guess I glanced over or forgot), Fed's free and State cost about thirty bucks.

Getting about $1,100 back, state and fed combined. That's about a third of what I got last year, but I also had to claim unemployment compensation this year and didn't have a tax expert filing for me, so yeah. My donations and work-related expenses counted for literally zero for me, and it cited that it was because of my "automatic" deductions already being higher than what those were worth, which I didn't understand. They helped me last year, but what do I know.

$1,100 will help, but it's not like it makes my problems go away or anything lol.

Have kids, then you'll get tons back.

That makes about as much sense as me having $90k+ in student loans just to get the sweet tax deduction

roughdraft_zero wrote:

That makes about as much sense as me having $90k+ in student loans just to get the sweet tax deduction

Eh. It's not like you have to take care of them.

If you don't take care of them, a lot of the same things can happen to you if you don't take care of your kids: poor credit, garnished wages, get sued, etc.. I hear that bankruptcy doesn't wipe out student loans either, which is crazy.

I got $224 fed and $92 back from the state.