My Tax Season Begins

I haven’t written much and haven’t posted anything in the past few days. Time-hogging projects in my day job have intervened. But that’s what pays the bills so as a personal finance blogger, it would be illogical for me to complain. I’m sure you did just fine without me.

So have all of your 2009 year-end tax documents rolled in? Mine haven’t yet. That doesn’t bother me because I have already estimated our tax liability and paid some of it. The rest can wait until the bitter end because I have another check to write.

Be extra selective this year about which tax software you use to do your own taxes. Many of the personal finance bloggers will be running “reviews” and other articles with lots of affiliate sales links. Nothing wrong with that as long as you do your own due diligence. I am a long time TurboTax user but I am probably switching this year. Intuit seems to have changed their revenue model on the TurboTax product and in a way that I’m not sure is good for the consumer. So I’m looking at other options, including TaxAct which I used to run my liability estimates. TaxAct is big on upselling from inside the product but with a little willpower, I should be able to use it completely free. More on this later.

Today is my first volunteer afternoon at the AARP/VITA Tax Aid tax office. We have a handful of new or modified tax credits to deal with so I’m sure to receive lots of questions about those. I hope everyone is in a good mood. I also hope that I don’t start my season helping younger taxpayers who make real money and don’t really need our help. I had a few of those last year.

I will probably write about today’s experiences tonight and publish something tomorrow or Thursday. Wish me luck!

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