flapjack212 t1_j1bih6p wrote on December 23, 2022 at 2:01 AM

do you have special situations other than working in NYC living in NJ? if so you might want to list it out a bit so people point you to the right level of service

that said if your only special situation is working in nyc living in nj literally anyone can do your taxes including HR block

pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j1dsmpz wrote on December 23, 2022 at 3:48 PM

Yea. Outside of a handful of special situations. Most tax preparers just punch your data into an app and print out the results. Often hiring someone for low wages to do the data entry.

Not much different than doing it yourself with any software of your choice.

These days all the major offerings support 95% of tax situations by the time you get to the top tier of their product.

So for most people, using a human is just a waste of money. For certain high income people who need to discuss tax strategies it can be worth it.

cbuzz8 t1_j1bjkwz wrote on December 23, 2022 at 2:10 AM

Special situations such as…? I don’t think there’s anything

objectimpermanence t1_j1bv10h wrote on December 23, 2022 at 3:41 AM

It could be a million different things. E.g., do you have your own business? Need advice for saving for college and retirement in a tax efficient manner? Any tricky investment-related stuff to deal with? Those are the type of things people tend to want to talk to a professional about. For the more complicated stuff, you don’t want to go to a random person at a place like H&R Block or whatever.

On the flip side, if your personal situation is fairly simple and you only have W-2 income plus maybe some interest and dividend income, then practically any tax preparer should be competent enough to handle that.

cbuzz8 t1_j1bvny2 wrote on December 23, 2022 at 3:46 AM

Thanks, that’s helpful but none of those apply for me