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I don't mean TurboTax or any programs like that. I mean: get the forms, sit down with the instruction book and a calculator, fill it out, put it in an envelope and mail it.
I've been doing it that way since 1981 or so and never saw the need to change. Granted, I don't have anything all that complicated to do on it, but even if I did, it is all explained in the book.
Someone I work with, who doesn't make much $, spent $180 on a tax guy last year and is considering going back even though this person will be able to fill out the 1040-EZ! This just blows my mind, being one of the frugal ones that I am. I have been asking every aquaintance, co-worker, relative, friend if they do their own and NOBODY does. I even had one co-worker exclaim, when he found out I did mine this way, "You know how to do that?"
I do mine by hand to practice and as a check for the software I use.
Do you know that filing online makes the process much quicker? If I can't find a free software next year because I make too much I may mail it in (this year I got to use credit karma tax for free). I also bumped up my exceptions this year to 3 and actually got a $0.00 refund for federal taxes!
Up until this year I was doing returns for a few people a year for free. But I like to "teach" them and explain the simplicity of it while I do it and I tell them they can do it themselves from now on. So far this has not worked for anyone and now every year a bunch of people still want me to do them.
I'm old school. I'm not comfortable or as comfortable doing it online as I am paper. I have in the past began doing it online but stopped midway. I don't mind the paper method.
I am amazed at how many people pay someone to do a 1040 EZ ! It is called ez for a reason. Our taxes are kinda long, so an accountant pal does it for us, but before we got complicated, I did ours by hand.
I used to do them by hand and our taxes were not trivial. We had capital gains, real estate gains, and itemized deductions.
But every year I would get a letter from the IRS saying I made a mistake. Half the time I owed more money, the other half the time they said I paid too much money. I got fed up with the whole thing and turned to Turbo Tax. But I am glad I did it by hand as I feel like I learned something from it. But it will be TT going forward.
keep in mind if you do it by hand and you have taxable income over 75k or so you need to do your taxes 2 ways . under the regular tax system and under the amt system . you pay the higher . software does it automatically
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