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Comment by kspaans | Hacker News Reader

    The main cost is hiring an accountant to do the tax return for you. Or figuring out how to do it yourself using software like TaxTron.

Not that I have anything against accountants, but what kind of effort are we talking for filing the taxes yourself? 5 hours vs 1 for a personal income tax return? 10 hours? A weekend? How many pages are there for a corporation (in the simplest case -- I'm sure there is quite a range)?

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Here's the main T2 form: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/t2/README.html

If you're annoyed about the cost now, wait till you find out about major firms outsourcing work to India and elsewhere for routine tax work.

Depends on the state, but coming from one of the more complicated ones, you can do your LLC related tax duties in a day assuming you've done the requisite and semi-substantial reading.

You could also pay an accountant for a year, and then you have a copy of the forms they prepared, and you can ask questions. At that point, you have a template you can use for future years.

Some tax forms don't have much for software options either, so you end up doing a lot of manual calculations. I've never come across anything for OS X that will do 1065 (the equivalent of 1040 for LLCs, general partnerships, and a few others).

It's not about effort but rather risk, specifically the risk of filing incorrectly and getting fined (or worse, audited) by the IRS.

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