Taxes

The past two years that Steve and I have been married, we have taken our taxes to an accounting service and paid them to do them. I could do them and in the past before taking them somewhere, I would do them. They were both easy and we'd just send them in on paper, no big deal. Once we got married we thought it would be worth it to take them somewhere so they could be e-filed.

Last year when we got our copies back from tax place, I noticed two major problems. The biggest thing was that Steve's total income was totally different than what was on his W2. When I called and spoke to the lady about the mistakes, she was very rude and not helpful in the least. Because they had already filed the taxes, we ended up having to file an amended return in March. We got an additional $400 back in June, that should have been on our original return! Grr. It was so irritating and maddening that we said we'd never take them there again.

I've seen a lot of these tax programs on sale and have been talking to people in order to get a feel for which program is best. We were at Sam's last week looking at the H&R Block program when a gentleman came up and told us that we could download the same program from H&R's website cheaper than buying it at Sam's. We had decided to go with the H&R program and were very appreciative of this gentleman's advice.

So last night, I sat down at the computer and started the process of downloading the program and doing our taxes. The program was extremely user friendly. Start to finish, from the time I started downloading the program to when I was done, it took me two hours. I didn't feel like that was bad at all. I was very giddy that it went so well and felt rather accomplished when I was done.

With the program you get one free state e-file. The only downfall with the program is that Arkansas's state form won't be available until Jan. 30. They recommend you e-file both your federal and state together, so I couldn't file them last night. No big deal though at all, I'll just finish it up next week.

If you are thinking about doing your own taxes and are looking into the different programs available, I would definitely recommend the H&R Taxcut. I'd recommend downloading it from their website too. It was $9 cheaper than buying it at Sam's. I'm glad the majority of ours is done and out of the way and I'm glad I did them myself.

I'm off of here now to go to the mall with Tanner and then to see the movie "Bride Wars." I'll write more later!