I think his comment would need much more information to back it up before I would worry about it. Do you know for a fact that your friend pays significantly less taxes than you or are you taking on face value that the accountant is performing magic?

I'm leaning more towards the assumption he is inflating his #'s to me, to seem more financially savvy.

In both of your cases your tax preparation should be fairly straight forward, with the possible exception of the home based business which has been discussed.

Which is what I thought, but I guess I was looking for some reassurance that I'm on the right track.

The questions to consider are whether you are comfortable in doing your own taxes? Secondly, would a paid preparer make enough legitimate difference to pay for his fees?

DW & I are fairly comfortable doing the taxes. His comments made me second guess our abilities for a breif moment.

Personally, I am the type of person that would not be satisfied with the services of a paid preparer unless I fully understood what was being done. This would mean that I would still have to pull together all of the pertinent financial records and understand where they all fit into the tax return. I have always thought that once I do that the filling out of the forms is relatively easy especially since I use software to prepare the forms.

I feel the same way about hiring a "pro". Now, If I only knew enough about Plumbing and Electric, I would never need to hire anyone. :)

Thanks Bob!