What makes you say that? I'm assuming you're adding other assumptions.
My wife and I combined make about $300K/year. We don't run a business, don't make charity contributions, only pay ~$5K in mortgage interest, and don't have kids. We don't even do retail stock investing (EDIT: And I haven't exercised any employer stock options), just a 401k, an IRA, and a 5.25% savings account.
We take the standard deduction. I can't imagine a CPA would be able to find so many possible deductions that it would be worth itemizing.
Which is also silly. My experiences with HR Block was that they basically had their own version of a TurboTax-like thing, and all they were doing was literally asking you for the numbers for each question. There was zero critical thinking applied.
I had just bought a house, just bought a hybrid, started working from home, and was new to the US.
"What are you claiming?" "What can I claim from this?" "I'm not sure. But I can put these numbers in here and see what it says."
You're literally paying for someone to type in the same numbers you would, with as much (or at times less) knowledge than you (who is also less invested than you in getting it right, but much more invested in selling their 'audit protection' stuff).
I disagree. If there's a CPA who wants to give me money-back guarantee, be my guest.
I do my taxes first. You (CPA) look over it, if can save me any additional money, I'll give you 1/2 of the additional money saved as your compensation. Deal?
There are alternatives to CPAs, who are licensed by individual states and don't necessarily specialize in taxes. Several states, including California, require testing and registration for paid tax preparers who aren't CPAs or Enrolled Agents. EAs are the only federally-licensed tax professionals with unlimited practice rights before the IRS.
It's reasonable to assume that CPAs pass along the costs of their marketing and lobbying efforts to their clients, without any guarantee of higher quality compared to the other professionals available.
I kind of wonder if software engineers making this kind of money but no tax problems should be getting advice from folks who can look back and see what they should have done. (tax problems sometimes come from outlier behaviors that might be good)
My wife and I combined make about $300K/year. We don't run a business, don't make charity contributions, only pay ~$5K in mortgage interest, and don't have kids. We don't even do retail stock investing (EDIT: And I haven't exercised any employer stock options), just a 401k, an IRA, and a 5.25% savings account.
We take the standard deduction. I can't imagine a CPA would be able to find so many possible deductions that it would be worth itemizing.