Income Tax Time Again

[LostInTyme]

Yesterday, I spent three hours doing my Federal taxes. Every year, I use Turbo Tax to do my taxes. I save the results on my computer, but the following year, Turbo Tax can not find last years return in order to use the basic information contained within. I don't know why, but this is how it is. Anyway, after completing the process, I printed a copy of the return, finalized the requirement for electronic transfer watched my email for the notification of transmission and receipt. This was at 3:00 PM. Nothing came, and I started to worry. About 11:00 PM I decided to look Turbo Tax 2022 again and found that I had not hit the "file" button. I did this at 11:58 PM and within one minute I got a notification that the taxes were on the way. This morning, I got a second notification that the tax return was accepted by the IRS. So, all is good here. Now, I have to prepare the taxes for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In all the 35 plus years I have lived here, I have never shared in the "common wealth" that Pennsylvania purports to be, or, not to be, as it were.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Yesterday, I spent three hours doing my Federal taxes. Every year, I use Turbo Tax to do my taxes. I save the results on my computer, but the following year, Turbo Tax can not find last years return in order to use the basic information contained within. I don't know why, but this is how it is. Anyway, after completing the process, I printed a copy of the return, finalized the requirement for electronic transfer watched my email for the notification of transmission and receipt. This was at 3:00 PM. Nothing came, and I started to worry. About 11:00 PM I decided to look Turbo Tax 2022 again and found that I had not hit the "file" button. I did this at 11:58 PM and within one minute I got a notification that the taxes were on the way. This morning, I got a second notification that the tax return was accepted by the IRS. So, all is good here. Now, I have to prepare the taxes for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In all the 35 plus years I have lived here, I have never shared in the "common wealth" that Pennsylvania purports to be, or, not to be, as it were.

One of the perks of marrying a CPA is not having to do my own taxes for the last 25 years. She does all the work. She goes over everything with me, I guess so I can't come back and deny knowledge should things go sideways, but my tax preparation is basically "sounds good to me". And one of the perks of living in Texas is not having to pay state income tax. Oh we pay out the nose in other taxes, but filing a return is not necessary at least.

 

[tonyb]

I’ve used CPAs for, geez, going on 30 years now.

The first died.

The second was a friend and associate of the first who was entrusted with his files so I went with him for a few years until he acquired much bigger accounts than mine to keep him busy so he handed me off to a third who did a fine job until his retirement.

So now I’m on the fourth, the firm owned by the third’s daughter and son-in-law.

I could do our taxes myself, but just preparing the info for the CPA is enough work for me (I ain’t about to pay their hourly rate to do the easy arithmetic). I have business income and have had rental income and capital gains and depreciation and my wife’s earnings and I’m just not interested in this stuff enough to bother getting boned up on it. I hand it all off to them and rely on their expertise to know what’s kosher. They send me a planner every January and I just fill in the amounts. That alone is several hours work, but a fifth-grader could do it, provided he had the records to work with, which I do. I’m big on keeping records. File folders are my friend.