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Comment by sublinear | Hacker News Reader

No offense intended, but my taxes must be a lot simpler than yours because I do the Free File forms in about 30 minutes every year.

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Moreover, just a few years ago I was in a position where none of the free services I tried would allow me to report a specific form of taxable income I received (a stipend paid by a university in the form of a reimbursement that wasn't reported as W-2). I literally spent 12+ hours on my otherwise very basic taxes just trying to navigate the interfaces for the "free" services.

I ended up switching to the fillable forms after that; lo and behold it turns out it's a tiny adjustment to one line on the 1040 and is clearly explained in the instructions. If your taxes don't change much from year to year it's trivial to work out the form each year. Like you it's always taken me about 30 minutes after gathering the various forms together.

I’m so glad someone else pointed this particular case out! When I was a first year university student but still claimed as a dependent on my parents taxes, the accountant who prepared the returns wasn’t even aware that it needed to be reported, so they had to redo it. Later when I was doing taxes for myself via TaxAct, there was no way (that I could see) to accurately report that income. It also stumbled on HSA contribution limits. Both issues were easily resolved with the free fillable forms (which come with detailed, if overwhelming, instructions)

I spend longer, probably 4 hours for federal and an hour for state (itemized deductions, SE income on a passthru LLC, W2 income).

I hire an accountant if there's something new I don't know how to do and then just follow the same process on my own for subsequent years.

US taxes are stupid.

1099s, K1s, SEPs, list goes on

add in retirement trusts owned by self directed IRAs invested in leveraged real estate and id love to see a 30 min tax return

i pay $1k and spend a few hours setting data up to give to the accountant

oh let’s not even consider the mess crypto or poker winnings are

> id love to see a 30 min tax return

That looks like one or two W2s, maybe a 1099, deductions, no state taxes, capital gains... and that's about it.

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