Yes, we are all human and we all make mistakes. If you pay a preparer to do your taxes, your return should be done correctly. You should have a guarantee that the return is done correctly. The preparer should pay penalities and interest if there is a mistake on your return and the IRS sends you a bill. Most of the people who use paid preparers are too lazy to do their own returns, don't want to spend the time to do their return themselves, are totally confused by tax law or want that guarantee in case the return is done incorrectly. Personally, I don't think you should be able to graduate from high school without knowing how to complete a return with wages, dependents, interest, dividends, and Schedule A. That isn't that difficult. It is important to remember that the paid preparer is only as good as the information that person has. If you fail to bring a W-2 or a 1099 Misc or a 1099 Int, the preparer has NO way of know that information is missing. A good portion of the mistakes preparers make are due to a lack of infomation or poor information provided by the client. We just had a case where a client got a letter from the IRS because he had forgotten to claim $17,000 in income on a Schedule C. In the IRS statistics, that goes down as a paid preparer mistake even though we had no way of knowing he had recieved that income in addition to the other income he had on his Schedule C. Some errors that end up on the preparer side of the ledger are a result of taxpayers lying about being married and whether or not a child has lived with them a full year. I've seen self prepared returns that a taxpayer claimed the Hope Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit and the Tuition and Fees deduction for the same student for the same tuition paid. Clearly this was a mistake. The software gave him a warning, but the taxpayer ignored the message, printed the return and mailed it in anyway. Mr. Taxpayer got a letter from the IRS a year or so later. When I talked to the taxpayer, his response was "The software asked the questions and I answered it". If Mr. taxpayer had spent 15 minutes doing some research to figure out why the software said his return was incorrect, he would have saved himself the terror of a letter from the IRS and a bunch of money. If you do your return yourself and use two different tax prep programs and get two different answers, you really need to figure out why the answers are different. I'm not trying to start a fight, but simply let the OP know that he/she should have figured out why there was a difference before filing.

I have used HR Block on line for years..Think it cost 30 dollars or so and its a hand holding simple walk you thru it, read carefully and fill in the blanks. Its free to do it until you go to file and that is when you pay. I dont even have to enter our basic information anymore..Its all saved..of course it gives you the chance to change anything that might need to be changed..ie when our daughter got married and we could no longer claim her. Give it a try!

I use Turbo Tax and it is fast enough for my purposes, but then, I alway buy a copy and install it on my computer. I never connect to the internet when I'm inputting tax data and fiddling with different scenarios. Also, I file by mail thus avoiding the electronic filing charge and any hacker that may be snooping my data stream. For backup records, I keep a paper copy and all the work sheets and the computer files. After I've filed, I will archive Turbo Tax and all its files and remove it from the computer. The main hassle I have is that the state code is not on the CD and must be downloaded from the web site. This takes forever over a dial-up connection. For those who have a high speed connection, this is not a concern.

The first year I did my own taxes on the computer, I used Tax Act. It was fine. At the time I couldn't file the state returns using it so I went to TurboTax the next year and have used it since. I tried using another one last year but there were some issues so I went back to TurboTax. I didn't like the $100 charge last year so I've been looking again. Creditkarma can't do my return and there are several others that wouldn't be free anyway so if I'm going to pay I'll stick with the one that I know, has worked well and always gets good reviews when compared to others. And it looks like I might qualify for free filing but not sure. I'll find out when it's done. Don't be afraid of using the reputable software/online options. They're secure, fast and easy to use. You can start on it and come back to it later. One caution to keep in mind. As you go through the step by step interview (at least on TurboTax) it will take some time. There's a delay to go through things which you wouldn't experience if you're doing it on paper. Just stay calm, have some patience and budget some time. Don't start it 10 minutes before it's due! FWIW it usually takes me between 6 & 7 hours to get everything in and run through, double checked, etc. Oh, and if you make a mistake and need to back up, no problem, just click the back button. TurboTax and TaxAct were both very user-friendly.