Comment by SoftTalker
7 months ago
If you just have W2 income and take the standard deduction, taxes are really quite simple to do on paper. It's a two page form, most of which you leave blank.
If you have self-employment income, business income, capital gains, 401k distributions, HSAs, 529 plans, etc. it can get complicated but at that point TurboTax honestly doesn't help all that much (unless it's gotten a lot better since I last used it). If you get to the point that your taxes are too complicated to do by hand you probably need an accountant anyway.
> at that point TurboTax honestly doesn't help all that much
It does. I have most the things you have mentioned and it was automated, except for correcting a small situation their OCR messed up by reading an extra blank space from the form.
Well that's good to know I guess. I haven't used it since they could OCR forms. I had to key them in manually, and it really didn't do anything much more than a standard 1040 return and the most common additional schedules.