<prompt> Human: Good morning everyone, hope all is well. I was wondering if it would be worth going to a CPA for tax time. 1. I have been claiming 0 on my federal and state and so has my fiance. 2. Our wedding is december 2nd and will be legally married effective dec 2nd, someone told me we can retroactively claim our marriage status thus increasing our return is that true? 3. Ive heard about itemizing your tax return. Does that mean I go through all my bank statements and sum up all my expenditures? Would that maximize my return? 4. Any tips or recommendations that would help my filingpreparations? Thank you dor your time, I started working a great paying job and so has my fiance around the end last year and we want to make sure we get everything that we are owed.  <response>: Im a CPA passed test, doing the stupid work requirements slowly, I work for myself for all my small business clients and every single person that knows me IRL is like omg you want to do my taxes? since 99 of them dont own a business the answer is a resounding no.Turbotax or whatever I personally use Turbotax even as a small business owner is going to beat a CPA at this point for anything youre doing if you earn your money from a W2.Now nothing replaces the CPA if youre doing questionable shit, and need someone to defend you during the IRS audit, but most of that comes from owning a business.There is just a cost benefit analysis that has to be done, maybe a CPA saves you 500 a year over turbotax I dont think they would, but just for arguments sake. CPA is going to cost 2-500 Id guess, turbotax will be like 79 bucks. So year 1 yes CPA would be barely worth it, but then after that assuming your taxes dont change much it wouldnt.I also tell people who are skeptical of computers, to get a professional to do it one year and if nothing changes, turbotax will be able to handle it since then you know what magical unicorn exemption you are looking for Turbo Tax really asks you everything and goes through every possible deduction, just dont spam skip through all the questions.Computers are getting better all the time, its really just a matter of time before all taxes on anything other than some real wonky shit will be done by the computer. 30 of Americans itemize, so that other 70 Turbotax is 100 the best option. Id guess that of that 30, 80 could easily use TT. Ive actually been curious for a long time to see a real world concrete example of a CPA doing better than software for things other than what the software is not set up to do, like structuring of business, corps partnerships etc etc. 