Tax Professionals and Random Number Generators

[Ron P.]

I'm dating myself but what the heck. I remember from years ago, that for a while Money Magazine did a yearly tax return test involving a hypothetical tax return and tax pros. Money Mag would ask a number of tax experts to calculate federal taxes for a make-believe family to see how they compared. Well, guess what, they didn't compare very well at all. Tax preparation fees range between $271 and $4,000 (1990 dollars). The correct answer came from the preparer who charged close to the low end of that range. I found this article describing the test: Tax Test

My question is, why should I pay a tax preparer $4,000 (in 1990 dollars) to prepare my tax return when I can use a random number generator to determine my tax liability and in all likely-hood have an answer no worse than a 'tax pro', and save myself $4k + probably an additional $4 to defend the non-sense in an audit?