Professional Tax Preparation or Not

[Curt Bixel]

For accounting, I use Rentec Direct, which allows me to keep track of all expenses and then prepare reports for all of my properties.

The information the system exports seems like it is most of what is needed to prepare taxes.  I am curious if I should just go ahead and complete my taxes myself or should I continue to have them professionally prepared by a tax attorney.

The reason why I am asking this is because I don't know if I am getting reasonably value out of my current arrangment.  I have 9 rental properties and pay a tax attorney $800 per year to prepare the taxes, but every year it seems that I find a few mistakes like mortgage interest not deducted on one property and insurance not deducted on another.

I had assumed that for $800, someone was spending 4 hours entering my information and going through things to make sure I was getting all the deductions I was entitled to as well as preparing things so as to minimize the chances of an audit.  I am not sure if that is really included in the deal.  

As such, I am trying to figure out if I would be better off getting a copy of turbo tax or something and just doing it myself.  

Any advice would be appreciated.  

[Matthew Kwan]

I would recommend to use a tax preparation if your rental portfolio starts to scale up like 3+ properties and if you are self-employed with stocks etc. However, avoid using HR Block at all cost!! The experience I had was nothing but terrible, they had zero clue what they were doing and only relied on their software by punching the numbers to prep my tax return.

@Albert Bui @Carlos Valencia