I was surprised when a search didn't turn up a lengthy thread or ten. How do Mustachians do their personal taxes? Paid online packages? Free online tools? Paper? Anything that was particularly good for dealing with a specific situation?
Started w/ pencil & paper.
Then a roll-our-own spreadsheet for many years. Kept adding columns for new years and rows (e.g., different banks, charitable deductions, etc.) as needed.
Went to TurboTax a few years back as a less expensive way (vs. the $350 CPA) to do my mom's simple-enough-but-different-state-and-I-wasn't-familiar-with-pension-rules return. Used it for our own as long as we had it anyway.
Probably paid for itself on our return by noting that we didn't have to include the ~$200 state tax refund, because in the previous year the AMT snagged us so we didn't get to deduct state taxes - don't know if we would have noticed that.
Even with TT, we have maintained the spreadsheet for two reasons:
1. Double check on fat-fingering entries in TT
2. Handy for planning next year's taxes and withholding (as others have already mentioned).
DD has Amazon Prime so we were able to get TT Premier this year for $55. That was low enough to keep me, although TaxAct's price is tempting....