Doing Your Own Taxes: The Dangers & Consequences

Last month, we released an extremely important blog about why you absolutely must have a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) on your team. Regardless of whether you’re an individual employee, self-employed, a business owner, the benefits of working with a CPA are spread across all financial demographics. Today, we want to drill deeper into this idea, discussing the dangers of doing your taxes on your own. 

Doing Your Own Taxes: The Dangers

It’s Time Consuming

For all the money we save our clients, the bottom line is that the tax code  is complicated. 

Unless you’re willing to read over 70,000 pages of instructions, doing your own taxes is simply not a realistic prospect 

Depending on your personal financial circumstances, you could be looking at tens of hours of tax preparation. Can you really afford that kind of effort without an assurance that it will pay off? 

Mistakes Are Damaging

Worse than failing to optimize your tax return, you run the risk of making an error. At best, small errors result in letters from the IRS requesting additional information or payments that you missed while filing. At worst, you may make false claims or calculations, resulting in greater fines, legal issues, and back taxes. 

Are you married? Do you have children? Did you sell stock this year? Have you kept track of work expenses? Have there been major financial events in the past year, such as an inheritance or additional tax implications? These questions are endless, and only a CPA can help you answer them. 

No One’s On Your Team

Filing your taxes solo requires that you sift through neutral language to find the right directions and answers. Automated services like TurboTax are indifferent to how much you save—and the federal government has even less incentive. Without a CPA, you’re on your own to interpret complicated codes and directives. 

Bound by a fiduciary responsibility, a tax services CPA fights for every cent on your balance sheet. Furthermore, they will provide priceless advice on related or even unrelated matters regarding your finances. Not only do you come out ahead on your taxes, you also gain invaluable advice for the future. 

There’s Nothing to Gain

Perhaps the best answer to the question of why one should do their own taxes is its opposite: Why should you do your own taxes? Unless you’re a retired tax code savant with a deep passion for tedious bureaucratic documents, this question is unavoidable. 

It’s possible that filing with the standard deduction will save you the most money. But the unspoken truth is that most people that take the standard deduction could have saved a lot more money. So either way you spin it, for the most part, there’s nothing to gain by doing your own taxes. 

Leadingham Rodgers Tax Services

Along with our broader consulting and accounting services, Leadingham Rodgers provides comprehensive tax services, including tax planning and preparation. 

1. Tax planning: optimizing your tax return
2. Tax preparation: organizing and filing your tax documents

Our tax services customers return time and again for good reason: they save far more than they spend on our services. 

Start with a CPA Today

But remember, tax planning is a year-round process. It’s important that, when deciding to work with Leadingham Rodgers, you start as soon as you can. Give us a call or visit our website today for a free consultation. 

Leadingham Rodgers Can Help Plan & File Your Taxes

Every year, millions of Americans risk the dangers of doing their own taxes. Filing alone may seem cheap and benign, especially through an automated service. But what they don’t see are the dollars left on the table. Leadingham Rodgers’ CPAs provide comprehensive tax services that ensure you save money. Contact us today for your free consultation.