sscritic wrote:I have spent over an hour just trying to get my tax software to download correctly from Vanguard.
Grt2bOutdoors wrote:You must be referring to the 47% who file the 1040-EZ form.
Now take your 1.5 hours and multiply it by 8 to get to the average time it takes to enter data, complete the 1040 plus Sch. A,B,D,E,Form 8606, Form 4952, the AMT form and then the requisite state forms - and that is for someone who knows what they are doing.
HueyLD wrote:Whenever someone starts a tax conversation by saying that it is very simple or it shouldn't take much time to do taxes, I always smile.
Sounds like the gauntlet has been thrown down.
I'm going to re-do this year's taxes (itemized 1040 with a big stack of 1099's) right now to prove it shouldn't take more than two hours.
Current time is 11:35 AM CST -- clock starts
now.
Live updates:
11:40 - W2 forms completed
11:45 - 1099-INT and 1099-OID forms completed
11:51 - 1099-DIV, 1099-R, and 1099-B forms completed
11:57 - Itemized deductions complete
12:03 - Got as far as possible with the federal return. Since I've already done TaxAct and TurboTax, I'm doing this run in H&R Block, but it's unfortunately incomplete -- it's listing my 1099-R and 1099-B forms as 100% taxable because some IRS forms are not finished yet, thus the final numbers don't match up with TaxAct and TurboTax. I'll return when it's complete (says Feb 7) to finish and compare.
12:08 - Finished state return as far as possible (same issues with incomplete software as noted above). Will return when complete.
12:10 - Remembered I forgot to list last year's state tax refund as income (didn't receive a 1099-G but I'm being proactive). Corrected.
Time elapsed so far:
35 minutes. I will come back to this thread & resume the clock once H&R block is fully usable, then when complete will post screenshots comparing against TaxAct and TurboTax to prove accuracy. I'll be very surprised if I go over an hour. I'm probably going a little bit faster than when I did the return in TaxAct and TurboTax, but probably not much faster.