Tax Programs – How Good Are They?
Filing the income tax returns to the IRS becomes a complicated affair, if you have income from various sources. If that is the case, the service of a tax professional is required. The tax professional could be a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), an Accountant experienced in IRS taxes or an IRS Tax Lawyer. But the services of these professionals are quite expensive. This has made many individuals to file their tax returns themselves. Taxes could be filed the conventional way by filling the paper forms. But with the advent of e-filing of taxes more and more people resort to electronic filing. E-filing is done with tax programs.
If you are planning to use programs to file your taxes, the difficult task is finding the software that suits your needs. These programs will assess your filing status through interactive questions like whether you are single or married; if married, whether you wish to file jointly or separately; your income source; whether you own a house or not etc. Based on these, the tax program will decide the type of forms you need to fill in. The prices for using the tax programs are based on the types of taxes you have to file and the types of forms to use. The simpler the taxes to be filed the lesser the cost.
Some programs come with online customer support. If you are not used to filing online, it is better to use this as you could get assistance, in case you get stuck in the middle of electronic filing. Some of the program only fills up the tax forms. If you want to do e-filing also, look for programs that offer e-filing services also. The cost of these will be more. Some tax programs have state tax forms also. Before you decide on the tax program, compare some of them for the facilities and costs.
The advantages of using them are that it is easier to fill than the paper form. If a program with both federal and state income forms is used, it’s easy to file state taxes also since the details in the federal form is imported to the state form and the information in the state tax form will be accurate. Another advantage is that Tax Programs are cheaper as compared to the services of a tax professional. If you are expecting a refund from IRS, then e-filing is the best way to get your refunds faster.
