The Advantage of Filing Our Own Taxes

Finally, I was able to submit our tax return thru Netfile last week :-)

The investment I made in buying an H&R Block at Home not only payed off by itself, but I was able to learn new things. Not only I was able to learn how to file my taxes (plus my family) on my own, I also learned more about the deductions that we can claim.

As an added bonus, I was even able to perform what-if analysis in some situations. In the case of daycare expenses, for example, we were missing 3 monthly receipts. So we were contemplating if we need to pay the $25 penalty just to ask for the copies of these receipts or we can do without asking them. Using the tax software we were able to check that it did not matter anymore if we had the missing receipts or not (saving us an additional $25!)

The H&R Block at Home itself was simple to use. I specifically like the interview style of questioning because it was like talking to a personal accountant myself. The Help icons were also quite helpful especially if I had some questions.

After doing the tax myself, I would only go to a tax preparation firm if my tax situation gets complicated enough that even the tax software could not even figure out what I am doing.