Comment by SoftTalker
5 months ago
Because in many cases they don't know. They don't know about your self-employment income and business expenses. They might not know about your marital status and dependents. They won't know about various credits such as education expenses, solar or EV credits, etc.
What percentage of tax filers have a single W-2, maybe a 1099, and take the standard deduction? If I had to guess, 80%.
Probably. And they could do their taxes on paper in 20 minutes if they weren't afraid to. TurboTax would like you to believe otherwise of course.
That fear seems, anecdotally, to be related to fucking it up and incurring massive liability possibly jail time. It doesn’t even matter if that statement is true — it just seems to be The Fear.