Monday, March 21, 2011

taxes, or how I learned to stop worrying and love H&R Block

Yeah, I do love the HRBlock. I used to get my taxes done for free when I worked there, but we just elected for the free software instead of going in to have it done. Big mistake. We probably could have saved ourselves with some major exemptions in MO and KS taxes. While it's not too late now, it's not necessarily worth it to refile for 2007 and 2008 when we paid in.

We paid for our taxes to be done because the software doesn't let you do a home-office deduction and we wanted to be sure that the rental use of our house wouldn't eat us alive next year after we lose our mortgage deduction. This year, we learned that our mortgage interest shrinks every year and won't even be advantageous for us next year and also that the  home-office deductions don't work for me because we make too much money and my current company paid for almost everything. But it was easier to spend 5 minutes letting someone else plug this into the computer for us than filing by hand or upgrading to software that would cost more. It also helped us save on KC earnings tax, reduced our MO, KS and MN taxes. So if we'd done it ourselves, there were a few small categories that we might have missed.
And we now know how to play it for next year when we rent the house. We know what deductions to go for, which exemptions to claim on the w4 and how to avoid getting a giant refund or paying in.

I love our friend at HRBlock and I can easily see how people develop a long-term relationship with their tax accountant, even when they are capable of doing it themselves. Having someone else calculate depreciation for you is way easier.

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