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How long did it take to actually do your taxes?


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We used TurboTax again this year and found it went much quicker than years past.

 

This year from start to finish, including stopping to locate some online info that had not mailed yet, it was less than two hours. More like 1 and 1/2 hours. It seemed so fast! Some years we are up until 2am. Granted we wait until the kids are in bed to start, but 2am is brutal when you are talking taxes.

 

How long did it take you this year?

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TurboTax is expensive! Y'all should take a look at TaxAct. I used to use TT and switched several years ago. Works great and is a lot less expensive. I'll pay about $10-$15 or so for our taxes, which include self-employment income and a rental ("Home and Business" with TT -- $79!).

 

My taxes would take me a couple of hours if I waited until I had everything in hand to do them. But I get impatient and start guessing and inputting things before I have the final figures because I want to see what my refund will be. So the backtracking and redoing makes it more like 3-4 hours.

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I use H&R Block. They import most of my information year to year, I pay $20, and I'm done in under 30 minutes. We have one income, home and student loan interest, and I have oil & gas royalties. I've been doing it this way since around 2008 and it's quick and painless.

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It is going to take some time this year, which is why I haven't done much yet. (OUr return can't be accepted until mid Feb anyway). We do do itemized deductions and I only realized after the fact that we can, for the first time ever, deduct medical expenses since our costs were so high this year. Normally, we can't since our costs were always much less than the threshhold. But this year, between paying insurance premiums for our son, dental costs, lots of eyeglasses, 1000 catastrophic cost that we did pay, and all the travel costs, we will have enough. Considering our medical is almost all paid for by the fed govt- 1K catastrophic per year, that we have okay dental costs, and that my son's insurance only cost 189 a month for a few months, the big cost is really the travel costs. We deduct about 1.25 for each visit to a pharmacy, unless the pharmacy is far away. Doctors are more, but the big travel costs are our trips to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, and later to Vanderbilt. That will take some time to gather. Plus, I want to make sure we deduct every charitable contribution we made and that takes some time too.

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Maybe 1/2 hour. H&R Block, one income, standard deductions. We're pretty basic around here :) The IRS process is MUCH faster this year as well. We filed on the 27th, accepted on the 30th, return in our account this Thursday. Never had that happen before.

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About 90 minutes with TaxAct. I paid around $40 (I got the audit shield). I had the program run an itemized list but ended up just having a standard deduction. We did find out that we paid 1/8th of our income on health expenses. I could have lived without knowing that!

We're getting a refund and I felt it was a very high number which is why I got the audit protection. But, I ran all the checks and there were no flags or warnings, so.....

It would have taking 45 minutes if I hadn't tried the itemized. :)

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Ours are complicated, though at least this year we're not dealing with multiple states as some years in the past. Some of it was a waste of time :glare: because DH wanted me to put in all the medical costs even though I told him that we weren't going to have enough to deduct them given that we couldn't include his share of the monthly premiums.

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It took me FOREVER this year! Like 4 or 5 hours.

 

I used TurboTax, like I always do, but I had to add in all of my DH's stuff because I got married in 2012. In addition to his "real" job he's also a professional musician, so he had about a billion deductions. Then we "argued" over things that he said he could deduct that I said no way, even though his accountant he had do his taxes previously has always deducted them. (P.S. I'm definitely right about not being able to deduct some of the things his accountant always has, and I hope for DH's sake he doesn't get audited).

 

Anyway, I did the taxes as married filing jointly and married filing separately, just because I was not going to sign my name to a tax return that had deductions on it that I know are not legally deductible. We ended up doing it my way, but he's still shell-shocked over how much money it cost us to get married. He should have listened to me when I told him we'd be better off financially just shacking up for the rest of our lives!!! :w00t:

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I use Turbo Tax since we have a small business and have to do schedule C, investments, medical and all that jazz. It usually takes me a full weekend going through paperwork, collecting everything I need, then entering all the information. I usually go over it two or three times to make sure didn't miss anything.

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Taxes? What month is it??

 

We are still waiting for one more form, then my hubby will take everything to the accountant.

 

We have a rental property in another state and have been dealing with the adoption tax credit for the last several years. We haven't done our own taxes since before our adoption. It's just not worth it for us.

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TurboTax is expensive! Y'all should take a look at TaxAct. I used to use TT and switched several years ago. Works great and is a lot less expensive. I'll pay about $10-$15 or so for our taxes, which include self-employment income and a rental ("Home and Business" with TT -- $79!).

 

My taxes would take me a couple of hours if I waited until I had everything in hand to do them. But I get impatient and start guessing and inputting things before I have the final figures because I want to see what my refund will be. So the backtracking and redoing makes it more like 3-4 hours.

 

Turbo tax for us is free. We have no state tax.

 

Ours took an hour and half. :)

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