On 08/22/14 12:39 am, rbowman wrote:

Every year people both do their own tax returns or pay companies like
H&R block to do it for them. If you're willing to do some homework at
your home computer, you can probably do better than H&R block.

Doubtful. A couple of years I got a letter from the IRS telling me I'd
missed some deduction or credit and they were sending me a couple of hundred
bucks back. I'm a little cavalier with the tax forms.

This does worry me a little. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I
am a programmer and paw through mountains of obscure documentation to create
working code. I'm very familiar with if ... then ... else, and even computed
gotos. If I can't make it through the 'simplified' 1040 instructions without
missing some obscure little detour on line 53a I wonder about Joe Sixpack
with the 7th grade level of reading comprehension.

A couple of years back I heard a radio interview with an economics
professor about the tax code. He said it was far too complicated for
him, and he let his wife fill out the forms.

Perce