Income Tax Filing

Some tax preparers try to make it look like taxes are some kind of black magic. While it isn't easy to learn how to do taxes, it's not impossible, either. In fact, tax software is so popular because so much of what tax preparers do is really a software kind of task: precise, but repetitive. Federal and state income tax filing is a perfect example of this.

The nice thing about tax filing software is that you only need to give information one time. For example, both state and federal governments want to tax your income, so if you state your income once, you can fill it in on both forms. In fact, when you do your federal and state income tax filing, you'll find that the state income tax paid may have a pleasant impact on the federal taxes you end up paying (sometimes, tax law is merciful!).
Of course, that doesn't mean that anyone who can do a federal filing can do a state filing, too. Smaller preparers may only do state filings in their own state, or might charge extra fees for people preparing federal and state income tax filing information for different states.Fortunately, online providers can serve everyone in the country, rather than everyone in a particular state. And because the work is easier to automate, they can do it for a much more affordable price. Letting a computer handle the number-crunching is a great way to solve the tax-calculation problem one time, well, rather than solving it again and again for every new person.