Democrats, Tax Cuts and More BS

[MikeBjerum]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/us/politics/19taxes.html?no_interstitial

A campaign ad pretending to be a news story.  The bottom line is that in a snobbish way it just calls us idiots.

The problem with this and so much to do with income taxes, regardless of which party passes them, is that it is hard to take advantage.  I was aware of this and how it works, but to take advantage isn't always as simple as it seems.  In many cases you will find yourself hiring an accountant or tax preparer and paying them most of what you save just to take advantage of it.

Without getting into the debates of flat rate taxes, sales tax only or "what do you earn... send it to us," we need a simpler system that lets the average (99% of all) citizen do their own taxes.  I have no problem with business or heavy investors needing to hire help.  But, the average worker should not need to pay $300 to $1,000 to have their income taxes figured ... and filed.  Has anyone caught the joys of filing on line that requires you to use a certain program, at a charge of course, or go through a preparer?

[tombogan03884]

1040EZ and snail mail, I'm not getting anything back so they can get the service they deserve.

[alfsauve]

I was a CPA and also went through, recently, Jackson-Hewitt tax school.   Still I haven't done a tax return manually in over 10 years.   I use Tax Cut.  Costs me ~$35, but I do mine and about 3-5 other peoples (gratis) so I think I get my money's worth.   No I don't understand everything the program does.   I just go through the motions and hope I never get audited.

It's a mess.   Everything in DC is a mess.....both parties are responsible.

[jaybet]

We've got a fairly complicated mess to deal with every year. Used to have accountants- accountant #2 found us an extra $3K that accountant #1 had missed and on-and-on. Eventually we found out that they basically plug everything into a program and what it spits out is what you get.
About 6 years ago after the accountant forgotten to include all of the recording costs against the cd we had made that year we decided enough was enough and we started using Turbo Tax and never looked back. Sure, there might be something it doesn't know, misses, or whatever, but it's every bit as accurate as the pros (there's probably an accountant on DRTV who is going to scream). It flags things when they seem outrageous. We're happy with it and it costs about $100 a year included state forms. We still print out and mail so we have paper copies, but we also have pdf copies of everything.
It's win-win I think.

[MikeBjerum]

Wifey uses Turbo Tax, and she also does our daughters ... or did till the wedding.

As I said before, it is a crime to have an agency developing a system this complex and messy, and then for that same agency to have the power to "attack and destroy" citizens for errors and to mead out penalties on their own made up scale.

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