In the last 20+ years in the USA, I have done taxes myself for 50+% of the times. When I went with professionals, ignoring driving / communication time, about 7 out of 9 times they made mistakes. Out of 5 CPAs I interacted with, only 1 did not make mistakes that I could find. Unfortunately due to his health reasons, he recommended clients to find other CPAs...
This would be the 4th CPA that I would have to fire for making mistakes... TurboTax "teaches" me, albeit at the cost of time. At least I feel assured that the calculations are correct and I know what I have done. I feel where it lacks is that portion where I could communicate with my CPA and ask a question or two saying hey, I cannot figure out whether my father-in-law with a green card with this insurance XYZ can be dependent on my forms etc. Paying $300-500 actually turns out for me is for that advice which typically is needed every other year AND spending less time on working on taxes compared to with Turbotax are the benefits of going with the CPA and the cost is always the mistakes they make and one has to spend (less) time finding them and working with them to get those corrected...
Is there something TurboTax / Intuit provides where I can call and talk to a CPA on-call to ask specific question or two? I would not mind paying say $25-$30 more for a year worth of answers for the specific questions I might come across... If there is a company standing behind the CPAs, it would be a win-win...
