Hired an accountant for the last couple of years, but this year i want to learn how to file myself. I have robinhood, wealthfront, fidelity accounts. I also have 2 W2s since i changed jobs midyear and had RSUs vest at the other company. My 2 main questions are 1. How hard is it to file the RSUs? Does turbo tax ask me about this? What form should i expect from my previous company for this? I sold the RSUs right away 2. I used to have a business 2 yrs ago that lost around $10,000-$15,000. My accountant back then said we can carry over the losses $3k at a time. Do i have to manually read my last yearās filing and see how the accountant did the carry over? Not sure how this works. #tax #taxes #rsu #turbotax #amazon #google #meta #faang
I always did my own taxes, last year used an accountant for the first time and due to the returns I got, never going back to doing my own taxes
What did the accountant do that was not covered by tax software? Did you have side business or rentals? This is a genuine question as I am evaluating if I should see an accountant.
No side business or rentals, accountants just know the tax code better than us, there is a reason people pay for their services and the tax software doesnāt always pick up everything
I use H&R Block, do it myself, but then pay $70 for a pro review which always finds a lot more refund and more than pays for itself.
Iām going to try doing it myself this year. W2 is really simple to file, but I have a rental property. Paid an accountant $400 but the refund he got me was basically what I came up with myself, so Iām gonna give it a shot this year. IRS is so understaffed.. pretty sure their focus is on big whales and people who donāt pay taxes at all rather than if you shouldāve gotten $1400 refund instead of $1600 refund because of a small mistake.
A warning that TurboTax is annoying as fuck when trying to put in a pre-existing depreciation schedule. If you start the rental property in it at purchase (or conversion to rental) it works fine, but man, I was beating my head against the wall doing my mom's taxes a few years ago.
Iāve always done mine myself. Started back before tax software existed. RSUās are easy to plug in for Turbotax. The loss carryover may require you to look back through all the years since the original loss to be sure you understand it. The annoying part about Turbotax is that their questions are sometimes hard to line up to the form until the very end, which may make it a bit harder to match up to what your accountant did.
I do it myself. Have a rental property. RSUs. HRBlock deluxe. You have to spend the effort to gather all your info anyway, might as well just do the extra work and file too.
1 - your RSUs are taxed as income at vest, so that's trivial, they're just on your W-2. Slightly more complex is if your sale isn't immediate (that isn't possible at Google, minimum 2 days between vest price and sale price, not sure about others), you'll have some short term gains and losses. You should get all that on a 1099-B from your broker. Just make sure it has the cost basis (ie what's on your W-2 above) is on the form and entered. If it's a public company, there's nothing magic about RSUs. Startups going through an IPO is a completely different matter. 2 - yes. Look for schedule C most likely. It should list the losses you carried from 2020 to 2021, take 3k in 2021 then list the remaining carryover that you can put into 2022.
Yes RSUs are taxed at vest. But I thought of it as supplemental income, which has flat 22% tax rather than tiered income based tax. Unless RSUs for the year+any bonus is over $1M. Isn't it?
No. 22% is the default *withholding* for supplemental, not the *tax*. They're taxed the same as any other income. For many people 22% is way too low.
TurboTax. I have some other small none work income and used a tax guy until he retired. I just followed along what he did prior years and did TurboTax (but need their deluxe or whatever higher end edition) Just stay up to date on news, Google and research on new situations or one time things. For example if are taking advantage of the EV credit, you'll have to report them next year (tax year 2023). Things like that.
Depends on how complicated your income is. I have a salary, a wife with her own business, rsus, stock investment income, etc. I tried doing it myself a few times trying the various tax software out there but they all led to year long back and forth with the IRS about them expecting different amounts than what I claimed. Used a CPA last year and haven't had a single issue so I'll never be going back to doing it myself. To me, having someone who does taxes for a living, lives and breaths taxes and accounting, is going to be better every time over me who looks at taxes once a year.
Itās tedious but itās easy as fuck. You just plug in numbers from forms. Every tax preparation software asks you yes or no questions and then you plug it in like Glade Scented Boosters