Tax Help Please

I've always used TurboTax, its relatively cheap, it handles investments (you should get a statement from your broker that will make this relatively easy) and all the signing bonus and moving stuff should be on your W-2. Any of these though are nearly idiot-proof, you get your stuff,you answer the questions, you click to file. H&R Block doesn't add any value, its just someone else putting the numbers into the web site for you.

You have never paid taxes before yet you managed to come up with 5 figures of trading losses in 20 trades? Jesus christ, you need to hire both an accountant and a financial advisor.

But really...turbo tax or taxACT or the H&R block software...your taxes sound easy (signing and relocation bonus were probably booked as income and had full withholdings). The online versions are fine, if you poke around for a while you can probably get the federal filing done free. Either do your state by hand or look to see if your state has a website to efile on (or pay the $20 to have the software do your state return too)

with 5 figures of trading losses you probably fully offset any trading gains so your tax situation is not hard at all.

Hire a CPA.

sounds simple enough for software - hiring a CPA may be overkill. At our firm we did personal taxes for our major clients as a value-added service to keep tabs on all their business dealings. We accepted walk-ins although we never advertised it - I was always amazed by the walk-ins we would get that had no complicated tax issues and no businesses and would pay $500-$1,000 for a tax return simple enough for an intern to complete.

You're allowed to deduct trading losses against your personal income to a limit of $3,000 per year. Since you had 5 figure losses, you can carry them forward. So, if you lost, say, $12,000, you can claim deductions of $3,000 four years in a row.

Don't spend the money on a CPA.

Just file your own damn taxes on TurboTax. Yours sound easy enough. Takes 15 minutes and you should learn how to file your own taxes when you're single and have an easy tax return.

Total waste of $200 if you get 'advice.'

Yup, it's quite easy.

I'll be using the H&R Block program again.

One thing to remember though...is that a tax accountant can take care of everything for $200. You walk in, hand him a pile of forms, answer some questions and you are done.
Sure that costs more than TurboTax...but once you start needing more than just a 1040 and if you have odd state taxes, turbotax starts to be $50+ with state files being like $15-20.

Learning about which things you should actually be doing and taking the time to figure it all out and enter the information could well be worth the price difference that your accountant will have. Also it wouldn't be a terrible idea to build a relationship with an accountant at some point so they can suggest behavioral changes that might help your tax burden and you will have someone who already knows your history if you need more complicated stuff in the future (start sending the kids to college or you become self employed or something).

I do it myself with the help of turbotax since I like figuring it out on my own so I don't count the time as a loss...but I am thinking about starting with an accountant whenever I stop being able to file a 1040EZ (which would probably be if I buy real estate or have enough things going on that I need to itemize deductions).

Its not that turbo tax can't screw up...I am reasonably sure that I missed out on some student loan interest deductions last year that I should have gotten...so you still need to pay attention to what you are doing.

I find that you can't be totally ignorant and hope for the tax software to figure it out. You need to know enough to recognize when the results make no sense.

FWIW, I've been using TurboTax these past 10 years or so and like it, but I also have a couple of research resources for the odd tax issue so I understand what's behind the numbers.

It looks like I might have missed a form from one of my lenders and left off ~$500 in student loan interest last year when I was doing 2010 taxes.

It is a straight deduction right? so it is worth about 500*.25(marginal tax rate for me last year)=$125?

Is this something where it is worth restating or does that open me up to unwelcome scrutiny? If I want to restate can I still use turbotax for that or do I have to find an accountant (at which point it is probably not worth it)?

Not quite. Anything student-related is subject to limitations. Here's a link:

student loan interest

In short, you might not have any deduction, but if you do, you can file an amended 1040 (1040X?) and claim refund. You don't need an accountant to do that, but you'll want to have your original 1040 at hand for reference. I can't recall whether TurboTax does amended 1040. In any event I do think it's a paper submission.

One more disclaimer - the IRS web site has 2011 codes on it: TY 2010 might have different thresholds or conditions.

I think I met those limitations in 2010. I successfully deducted another 700 or so in student loan interest, I just seem to have missed one of the lenders (I was pulling info for this year and the forms had 2010 numbers as well and it looks like I missed one lender with about $500 in interest).

From the 1040A instructions, it looks like the extra 500 would have just taken 500 off of my AGI