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Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a more complicated return eg other income, investments, etc or is this the average of how long it takes?

That’s insane.

I'm not OP, but if you are a reasonably high-earning professional common on this site, you trigger a ton of stuff. I used to take about that long to do mine, although I've gotten much faster. In a normal year, I typically file forms 1040, Schedule A, Schedule B, Schedule D, Schedule 2, 6251, 8606, 8949, 8959, 8960, 8995 + state versions of some of those. I'm also married, so I calculate all permutations of joint/separate with itemized/non-itemized, which also requires you to actually figure your taxes instead of leaving it blank and letting the IRS do it.

It gets really complicated very quickly, but if you are single, have less income, and it's only from wages, it's much simpler.

Yes, you are right. In hindsight, what I viewed as "complicated" is not what everyone else views as complicated. Because I do this manually, I am much more aware of all of the different forms and roughly when to use them than most other people, so I don't view my taxes as particular complicated because I can see situations where they can get insanely more complicated. I filed more than just form 1040 with the IRS this year if anyone is curious.

As to the permutations aspect, this does take a lot of time but it can net a lot of savings. One thing that I would add is that you do have the choice to round to the cent or the whole dollar (at least with the IRS), but generally I have never found that to make any substantial difference, so I just round to whole dollars at this point and don't waste my time trying to optimize that.

I don't have a particularly complicated return, to be honest. I just take my time and don't stress myself out about it. The time includes everything, not just the time I spent putting in numbers.

You may find it insane, but I'm OK with it. I'm not going to knock somebody for doing something different, but I do think it is important to know how to do it yourself when push comes to shove.

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