Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Don't Be Too Trusting Of Your Tax Software

Don't Be Too Trusting Of Your Tax Software

I have been grinding over the pretty big chunk of money that I needed to send to the IRS and the Idaho Tax Commission--and wondering, "What did I do wrong?" I made less money than last year--and yet I owed a disturbing amount of money.

I read through the final printed tax forms to see if they made sense. I noticed that I had a truly astonishing amount of interest and dividend income from Charles Schwab--so much so that I decided to pull out of the printed form, instead of relying on the data that TurboTax downloaded from Schwab. And sure enough: it appears that TurboTax downloaded my 2009 Form 1099-DIV and Form 1099-INT without removing the 2008 data (which was quite a bit higher). The net result was a huge chunk more interest and dividend income than I really earned.

I'm writing checks for about $3000 less because I verified the data before mailing. Be careful--and remember that you don't have to be Timothy Geithner to have TurboTax mess up your taxes. (Of course, not being Timothy Geithner, you will notice that it had me paying too much, not too little.)

3 comments:

  1. Glad to "meet" you. I linked from TOTWTYTR, and just had to comment on this post.

    Hoo-wee. I, too, will no longer use tax software. IRS online has excellent instructions, and even a "sample" form with the page numbers for each line. I found 2 deductions that my tax software missed last year, and the whole process went much faster.

    I had a similar experience with the "pros" at H&R block. The dood didn't listen to what I told him. Pah.

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  2. I think at a certain income level one should use a CPA or Enrolled Agent. The dialogue between taxpayer and tax preparer is what one pays for and one gets. This is not possible with software and most taxpayers are too busy with their own lives to be tax experts.

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  3. I've noticed TurboTax miss a couple of things this year as well. It just doesn't seem as solid as in the past.

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