[Sohcahtoa82]

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.

[brianwawok]

Yup totally silly. My CPA wouldn’t even take you on as a client, he would say go to HR block if you don’t want to do it,

[FireBeyond]

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).

[fooker]

The IRS prays for citizens like you!