I’ve been married for fifteen years. In the course of that time, we’ve done our own taxes every year but one, the year my dad worked for Jackson Hewitt. Each April, we are miserable, cranky, on edge, snappish, and generally unpleasant to be around. Taxes will do that to a person.
This year, my husband made a deal with a man in our neighborhood. He traded time doing the man’s genealogy for the man’s time doing our taxes. I can’t even tell you how wonderful it was to hand all our documents over to someone else and let him take care of it for us. The stress was lifted from our shoulders. Birdies twittered in the treetops. I believe a rainbow even arced over our house. That’s what it felt like, anyway—it was great.
When our tax documents were returned to us, we made an incredible discovery. We are getting back a refund, and it’s a pretty significant one. In fact, we’re going to be able to pay off a debt with it, one that has been yet another source of stress. Had we done our taxes ourselves, we might not have done it properly, and we might have missed out on that refund.
People who do taxes professionally are trained in knowing how to file them and how to give the right credits to maximize your refund. As the tax laws change every year, the professionals are brought up to speed on those changes and they know how to use them to your advantage. It’s difficult for the average person to stay informed about every little nuance of the law, and so more often than not, the average person doesn’t receive their maximum refund.
Yes, it’s entirely possible to do your own taxes. I’m not saying you shouldn’t—some people are really savvy and it’s a simple matter for them to file and know what’s coming to them. But if you’re like us and find taxes to be a horrible, terrible thing, too awful to be inflicted upon the most vile of sinners, and you’d rather burn out your own tongue with a hot brick than do them, you might want to hire a professional. We’re sure glad we did, and we will never again go back to doing it ourselves.
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