It's almost April 15th, time for your taxes to be submitted and paid to the federal and state governments.

I decided to use TurboTax this year, instead of the tax preparer we used last year. I wasn't impressed because I found several mistakes he'd made. I wonder if he used tax software to prepare our return?

Yesterday I was trying to get our taxes completely done and ready to be submitted. I was researching the home office exemption a bit more to make sure I was correct that we can't take it. First of all, the area that I use to prepare Mr. A's books, my desk, is just a tiny little area.  It's barely 5′ by 7′. Mr. A is talking about building me an office which would be accessible from our living room, but we haven't made any firm plans on that yet. It would sure be nice to have a real desk.  I'm using a desk now that is a more like a student desk, with no drawers. It is wide enough to hold my monitor, and my printer. Then the shelf below the printer to my right holds my scanner, copy paper and the wireless device. The bottom shelf holds the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), speakers and other Internet related devices.

My goodness, I digress!  More on the home office deduction at another time.

During my research, I ran across this site, June Walker: Tax & Financial Advice to the Self-Employed since 1979.  She does not recommend using a tax software program if you are self-employed.  She includes a link to some bad reports that are coming in on TurboTax, and not just for those that are self-employed!  Kind of scary, and I will definitely be printing out our returns and analyzing them by hand with calculator to make sure everything is included.

I decided I'd better hand calculate our estimated taxes by downloading Form 1040-ES from the IRS to make sure TurboTax is correct.

I haven't done that yet, but I changed the option in TurboTax to paying 90% of the estimated taxes due, instead of 100% because I am having extra withholding taken from my checks that isn't included in TurboTax's estimated tax planning section.  Oh, and I also discovered that the extra money people are getting in their paychecks is a credit – since Mr. A is self-employed, I entered half what we're eligible for, so he had a $400 additional credit. That means we'll only owe $660 each quarter.  Did you know estimated taxes aren't actually due quarterly?  They are due April 15th, June 15th, September 15th and January 15th, 2010.

Did you use TurboTax this year?

Mrs. Accountability

*Please remember I am not a tax professional. The information in this post is from my own personal experience and based on research for my personal situation.*