Self-sufficiency

I have posted a few times, and received very valuable advice on this forum.  I get the impression that there are regulars posting here who are extremely knowledgeable without necessarily having been professionally trained. Can you share how you gained your expertise?  My husband and I are both ready to put in the hours and work necessary to become self-sufficient so that we don't need to rely on the very costly advice of major accounting firms to do our taxes both here and in the US. We have had to bite the bullet and pay a lot of money to sort out our extremely complicated situation for this year and next to deal with our issues but after that we both want to be able to manage our tax returns ourselves. Can you tell us how you have have gained your knowledge and expertise?

I've done expat taxes myself and I've done it with accountants and frankly, the money I've paid is well worth it. The only exception was when my affairs were bone simple and I had no complicating factors at all. But frankly as soon as you have bank accounts, pensions, investments crossing borders ... my feeling is it isn't worth the pain and the danger to do it yourself. Of course people do and do it without consequence. But the traps are many and complex - and not all are obvious. If you insist on trying it yourself, the best way is to pay someone to do it year one and then the next year paint by numbers and hope the law hasn't changed and your situation hasn't changed. But I've always felt the money I spent on professionals to have been well spent - it saved time, it saved my irritation, it saved the money I might have had to pay in penalties I stumbled into. Sorry - I know this ain't what you wanted to hear.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not an expert, but I am managing to stumble my way through my tax return for the first time this year (and last time, as I renounced in 2016). I paid an accountant to get compliant and do streamlining, etc, and I'm working from those previous returns. I'm finding that if I just follow the 1040 line by line, diverting off to the various schedules and other forms as they come up, reading instructions of 1040 and the other forms as I need to work something out, then I can pretty much work it out as I go along.

I won't lie - it's a pain and at times I feel like I fall down a labyrinth of forms-within-forms-within-forms. But I feel, at the moment, that it's doable.

The tax accountancy firm we have used has charged in the many thousands of pounds, so obviously not something we can cope with year after year. If we aren't confident enough to do our own returns, and I think they are sufficiently complex to make it a daunting task, we shall have to find a competent independent accountant charging in the hundreds rather than thousands. But ideally I would like for us to be able to do it ourselves.