The merits of doing your own tax vs using an accountant
This post was inspired by a recent Lifehacker article that reported that a very high proportion of people use a tax agent for their tax returns.
I’ve been doing my own tax returns using the ATO’s E-tax software for most of the past 10 years. Besides being tied to the Windows platform (leaving Mac and Linux users electronically high and dry), I’ve found it to be fairly robust, and with so much information such as income, investment, and health insurance being pre-filled by 3rd party data uploads, there sometimes isn’t much to do.
I once paid a tax accountant to do 2 years worth of individual and business tax returns (the business was dormant), because everything seemed to be a bit of a mess. I paid $700 for an $800 return. Looking through the returns that they’d produced, I couldn’t see any special voodoo that I couldn’t have done myself. Depreciation, legitimacy of deductions and CGT are the things that tend to puzzle me.
So, I ask you, fair reader, do you use eTax or an accountant? If the latter, is there something in particular that they do for you that you feel adds value above and beyond the DIY approach?
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