Hi there,

Hope this post find everybody well! As a landlord, if you do the income tax return by yourself, what kind of software you use?

Thank you very much in advance.

Although I am very much a hands on LL, I hire a professional for my taxes.

Not my bailiwick, and too much at stake.

I haven't done my own taxes since 1986, which is the year we got married. He had investments, dividends and such...too much for me.

When we got into rentals, in 2003, our tax preparer was not happy and when we totally grew 2004-2009, he fired us. Beyond his skill and knowledge level. Found another guy but still not a great Real Estate pro. When we found our last company, they went back and re-did three years of returns and found a TON of missed deductions and such.

This year that company fell apart, so we just signed on with a Real Estate Pro tax firm (I think they are in Ohio?)

Thank you so much for your responses. This is very helpful. I will use Turbo Tax premier. I am sure I will need "The live help." I hope they can see my screen, too and help me when I need them.

I found that it is pretty easy to do my own taxes if it is just W2 income, Sched's A & E. A few spreadsheets and a report from my rental software and it only takes a few hours.

I found it would take longer to get the tax software to line up with my previous depreciations, so I just do it on my own.

NOLO Publishing has some excellent books. Every Landlord's Tax Deduction Guide and Deduct It! Lower your small business taxes are must reads for me. They put out updates each year on their website. Nice thing about these books is they were written in every day language, so they are easy reads. I stick post-it's all through as I read them.

An issue with software programs is they tend to be one-size-fits-most. I do my Schedule E pencil and paper, then we sit down and enter it into Turbo Tax. (Cuz hubs is a doubter. Lol!)

Turbo Tax keeps suggesting I deduct as expenses any depreciable items under $500. Uh-nuh. Not if the house is only valued at $30k. I would hit that 2% limit of the safe harbour rule almost before I even get to ANY depreciable items. That's where knowing MY situation helps, rather than relying on the software to guide me. Turbo Tax support does a fairly good job of delving into those types of questions, but you have to know to challenge their suggestion. If I had simply followed their questions on the Safe Harbor for small tax-payers, I would have thought it was OK for me to expense many items. Maybe I could 'get-away with it', but my husband lives in fear of an audit. So, for us, I like knowing I could fully defend every deduction.