[juneyi]

Less popular opinion so definitely not for everyone (not addressing leaks or security, will leave that to others who are far wiser).

If you make $xx/hr in ur full-time and you have taxes beyond simply w2 and 2 or 3 banks for checking/credit/investments, doing taxes on your own through freetaxusa or turbotax may take up an entire afternoon or whole day (unless your one to be very organized like the top poster here, respect). At some point, its worth thinking about how many hours of your time does it stop becoming worth it to do your own and hire a cpa.

For me, once forms like donations, multiple w2s, property, landlord stuff, started adding up, it'd take an entire weekend. Thats 16 hrs of my life, i eventually took the leap and found a great cpa (after wasting $$ on overpriced ones) thru a friend referral and now spend $600 on what takes me less than 2 hours to consolidate and upload forms, and double check deductible expenses.

Whatd i do with all my extra time? Binged 3 body problem. Yes, i wasted it. But a better person would spend it with friends or family or reading or anything more productive than me. If this seems to fit your mold, its worth considering.

Again, not for everyone but good to think about as life progresses for you (or anyone else here).

[toast0]

I did taxes with a CPA twice, and given that I need to sign them, and that I take the fall for mistakes anyway, I needed to review them, especially when weird things happened and the CPAs couldn't explain why.

Collecting all the forms and stuff feels like more of the work than putting into the software, and you've can't delegate that anyway.

Maybe your form entries are harder than mine, but then I'm happy to say no to things because the paperwork burden is high. I have no desire to be a landlord, because in addition to the actual work of maintenance (or even worse, scheduling and supervising others doing maintenance), there's a paperwork burden. I'm even considering dropping my international stock fund to eliminate the paperwork burden of the foreign tax credit.

[amerkhalid]

I used to use CPA for years when I had decent freelancing clients. The CPA was great as I can email him any tax question anytime and he usually answered in details for free.

But as for saving time, I would not consider that a benefit. It still takes me hours to gather all the forms from various websites, take photos of other forms that were mailed, receipts, and other expense stuff. The benefit was that I had an expert available to make sure it was done right.

You will still need to proactively tell CPA about any changes in your life.

I stopped using my CPA when I missed a deduction for buying a new car. But later I asked him how do I know what are important tax related things to avoid missing any deductions and breaks. He started sending me a giant pdf to fill out. That was more work and less user-friendly than simply using TurboTax.