We are well into tax season, so let’s talk about the dreaded subject.

Nobody likes to pay taxes, of course, but what makes it worse is how complicated it is. Back when I was single and had a staff job, I would receive one W-2 form and that would be what I had to work with. I would get Form 1040EZ from the local library (we didn’t yet have computers to which to download it), fill it out manually, send it off, and get my nice refund a few weeks later. I would do the same with Form 503, the short form from the State of Maryland (sometimes the state would give me a refund and sometimes I had to pay them).

Those easy days are over and have been for a long time.

My husband and I have to fill out not only Form 1040, but also Schedule A (our itemized deductions), Schedule C (to report Fiedler Editorial’s profits), Schedule SE (the self-employment tax for me), and Heaven knows what other forms which I cannot remember. Doing so is nerve-racking and very difficult, especially for someone like me, who doesn’t like math and has never considered herself good at it.

The one time I did our taxes all by myself, I made so many errors that the IRS ended up sending us a check months later for an overpayment. It was definitely nice of them to do so, but it was embarrassing at the same time. (Not to mention that our last name was misspelled on the check, so we were initially unable to cash it and encountered countless headaches trying to fix this error on the IRS’s part.)

Nowadays, my husband and I use a professional tax preparation service. We are very satisfied with them. We do not use software like Intuit Turbo Tax because we prefer dealing with an actual human being.

How do you prefer to do your taxes? Yourself? A tax preparer? An accountant? Software?