• Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    5 months ago

    Same. It sucks having to pay H&R Block $300/year to file my taxes, but their online records save my ass every time I buy a house. I sincerely hope we see a more robust free file system in my lifetime.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      5 months ago

      $300? Just use Free Tax USA. It’s free for federal and $15 for each state. No, you don’t need extra stuff, unless you think you’ll be audited.

      If you spend a little time figuring out your tax situation, you don’t need to pay someone else to do it. Here’s a secret: the people they have doing your taxes don’t necessarily have a master’s degree in tax. Those people are helping corporations or wealthy people with trusts.

      • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 months ago

        You missed the point of my reply. I pointed out that the benefit of H&R block is that they keep the records easily accessible, so when I buy a home I just link the H&R block account to the lender and they pull all of my tax and income history. Saves countless hours of gathering info and filling out paperwork. That’s worth $300/year to me.

        • JackbyDev@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          5 months ago

          You wanna pay and extra ~$280 a year because you save a little bit of time when you buy a house? You know FreeTaxUSA has all your documents too, right?

          • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            5 months ago

            You’ve never bought a house if you think it’s saving “a little bit” of time. We’re talking easily 40 hours of gathering and filing paperwork here. That’s $2,200 of my time. If I buy a house once every 7 years it works out.

            • JackbyDev@programming.dev
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              5 months ago

              I’ve bought two houses and it did not take me 40 hours of gathering paperwork. Maybe an hour or so maximum to get my paperwork for the bank.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 months ago

          Do you buy houses all the time? Do you want your income info to be sold to anyone who will pay? You are paying extra for them to have access to your info.