Fees

How much are you really paying for tax preparation?

What if I told you there was a hidden fee in your tax preparation bill. This hidden fee costs you serious money every time you file your taxes. This hidden fee shows up even when you prepare your own tax return. And it is totally avoidable. They sneak the fee in because you never see it and therefore never complain about it.

The hidden fee is hard to identify. It doesn’t show up as a line item on your accountant’s invoice or the online software payment page. Yet the fee digs hard into your wealth.

This same hidden fee looks different when you prepare your own tax return than from a professionally prepared return. The best way to expose this usurious fee is to handle it separately from how it is applied to DIY tax preparation and professionally prepared return.

“Start a side hustle or small business” is a common refrain when working to reduce debt or retirement planning is involved. It all sounds easy on paper until you realize most businesses fail within a year or so.

The problems with starting a business are myriad. Most businesses fail because they either have too little or too much business and the problems begin with the price or fee charged the customer.

Yes, some businesses fail over financing and other financial issues, but price frequently is the destroyer of small businesses. Charge too little and you end up with too much work with no profits to show for the effort; charge too much and nobody will even waste their time kicking the tires to see how good you really are.

Living a frugal lifestyle sometimes lends to a false sense of security. We take all the financial precautions to increase our savings rate and invest in broad-based index funds. Before long the net worth starts reaching for the stars and we feel good about ourselves.

Now, we decide, might be a good time to get a second car or trade for a new one. Moving to a smaller home, across town or to another state or country, sounds tempting and easy to do with your nest egg growing faster than you are spending.

Your habit of caution is well defined. There will be no stupid tax in your future! Careful planning leads to good decisions. You look before you leap.

Then it happens and you never even saw it coming. You paid a stupid tax without even realizing it was there.