I'm sorry for your loss. The loss of someone you've spent more than half your life with is not something one just "get's over". At best, it just becomes more bearable (for lack of a better word) with each passing day. As for your taxes, I would suggest you at least attempt it on your own, with the realization that you can always post here, or in the TurboTax AnswerXchange forum if you need help. But you should start early so that if things do get to overwhelming for you, you'll still have time to deal with a CPA. I do have a few suggestions that I hope you will find helpful and will hopefully increase your confidence in filing your taxes yourself.
- If on past joint returns your husband was listed as the first tax filer, that will be a problem with the IRS computers if you e-filed your joint return last year with the online version of TurboTax. When using the online version of the TurboTax program, the IRS computers expect the first person listed on a joint return to "always and forever" be the first person listed. This only applies to you if you used the online version of TurboTax to file your joint return last year.
To avoid this problem, what you will need to do is to create a completely new online account for "you" for your 2018 tax return. Of course, this means you will not be able to import from the 2017 return since it will be in the "old" account. So you will need a printout of your 2017 tax return that will include all the worksheets. That way, if you have anything to "carry over" from the 2017 tax return to the 2018 tax return, you will have that information available to you in the printout.
Right now, TurboTax Online is shut down for at least a week (could be two weeks) while they do the turnaround for the 2018 filing season. So you may not be able to access the 2017 PDF file online at this time. Once the turnaround is complete and all the 2017 stuff is moved to the "prior years" section of your account, you'll be able to access that PDF file and it will include all the calculation worksheets and everything you will need if necessary, for the 2018 taxes.
- Start your 2018 tax return as soon as feasibly possible. That probably won't be until after Jan 31st of 2019 at the earliest. That's the "drop dead" date for when people and organizations have to have tax reporting documents such as W-2's, 1099-R's and the such in the mail to those that require them.
- This is just a suggestion, but do not actually e-file the return before March 1st of 2019. I say that, because with the massive changes in tax law for 2018, I am expecting a "lot" of issues, problems and even errors in the TurboTax 2018 program, of which I would expect the ones you and I would care about would be fixed by March 1st 2019.
- As you are working on the 2018 tax return, if you have questions then please by all means, post your question here. Overall though it would probably be better to post your question in the TurboTax AnswerXchange forum which it at https://ttlc.intuit.com You'll need to create an account here to log in, but if using the online version of TurboTax, then that "is" your account and you are essentially, already logged in then.
If you have any further questions or concerns at this point, just post them here. If I can't answer them, I'm sure others will.
