For many, many years I did our taxes using both H&R Block (originally TaxCut) and Turbo Tax and submitted the one that came out best, which for all but one or two years was always Block. Most years it beat TurboTax by a fair margin. Clearly, TurboTax sucked. Block saved money and never got the IRS after me so I thought I was doing OK. I was self-employed all this time but my wife was not, she got W2 forms.
Then she lost her job of 22 years and took it as an opportunity to start her own business. For the first couple of years I did our taxes as always. But her business took off. Doing the taxes was getting complicated and I was beginning to think maybe I should turn tax duties over to an accountant. She knew one so we decided to let him have at it.
For about $300-$350/yr he does 1099 forms for her employees, federal, state and city taxes for both of our businesses and ties everything up in a nice, professional package. He gives us a good price because I compile all the figures from GnuCash and other records. No shoeboxes of invoices for him to add up. I give him a comprehensive sheet with everything from business license fees to printer ink, totaled and categorized. GnuCash makes it simple.
It's been one of the best things we've ever done. He's an old school accountant, really knows his stuff. He has saved us thousands, literally thousands of dollars the last 4 years over using tax software. And not a peep of protest from the IRS. Mention TurboTax around him and be prepared for a rant about how it must be written by the IRS, how QuickBooks for business is broken, etc etc.
BTW, he's a GnuCash fan and will launch into another rant about how Quicken and QuickBooks is causing double-entry accounting to be a lost art, etc etc. Like I said, he's old school. He's actually kind of a pita, I can't honestly say I like the guy. But he's good at what he does.
The banks, and Quicken, will tell you up front:
Do not make a Transfer via the Accounting Program..... it will suffer delays of as much as 5 days or more..... it goes thru the intermediary functions and has to get Security Verifications before it is allowed to be sent to the banks. They all tell you to sign onto the Bank's online website and handle you transfers from there.
Nice. At least they tell you up front how worthless they are.
Makes me sick how the banks and Intuit have conspired to make Quicken a virtual default for banks. It's no accident or tech superiority by Intuit that makes it difficult for anything but Quicken to communicate with banks. It's a coordinated effort to keep Quicken's virtual monopoly going.
