Related Posts
Rising Star
More Posts
Help, I don't want to work today!
Any in-house counsel in here willing to post their company, level or YOE, and total comp breakdown? If you’re comfortable, please consider posting both your current stats and what your stats were when you first moved in-house. If there’s any other information that you want to share, please include that too (e.g., hours, interesting perks, etc.). Info on in-house salaries is pretty hard to come by, and it would be great to compile some data points here! Facebook Amazon Google Netflix Apple
Additional Posts in Big Law
Anonymous User
Coach
How much do partners pay for health insurance?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Coach
Not sure what class year and title have to do with anything. Depends much more on how complicated your income and assets are. A first-year with a house, multiple unique types of income-producing investments, access to less common credits or deductions, etc. might want to hire someone.
A seventh-year with employment income, a 401k and a Robinhood account doesn’t need to hire anyone.
Probably not, and especially if you aren’t married and don’t have property or other businesses. W2s are super straightforward, so there isn’t really a way to escape our high tax rate.
Serious question: Why is everyone saying owning a house complicates things? I own a house and the mortgage company sends me a form showing the interest I paid and other info and TurboTax has a easy way to input that all. Voila. Is there something not on this form I’m missing by using TurboTax?
Coach
On its own I do not think any type of property or income requires an individual to hire someone. I included it as an example because I think having more things to account for and potentially weigh against each other can make hiring someone worth it—not even necessarily because the accountant would do a better job, but to avoid the time it takes to input tons of forms into the program. I think the vast majority of people could probably just use TurboTax.
I used TurboTax until I got married in my 3rd year. I didn’t have complicated finances, just one income, student loans, and rented at the time. Always worked just fine. When I got married and bought a house I felt like it was time to have someone dive a bit deeper (and make sure we’re jointly making the right choices to not end up owing any taxes at the end of the season). So, I think it just depends on what else you have going on financially
TurboTax also now has a feature where a live person does it all for you, you basically just give them your paperwork. Was great for me.
I used TurboTax for several years, including after getting married, owning a house, having some capital gains on investments, having a kid. Only stopped and hired an accountant last year when my wife started her own business and needed to work with an accountant for it. I know several people who used TurboTax until they made partner and had trickier tax situations. As long as you don’t have some kind of financial situation that’s unusual for a mid-level associate, using TurboTax should be fine.
Depends on what “worth it” means to you. Mine are super straight forward and I could do my taxes in my own, but I’d rather pay someone $250 to deal with it.
Coach
It’s the difference between using LegalZoom and a firm for me. TurboTax is fine if you have something relatively uncomplicated, but I pay like $400-$500 for my accountant to do stuff and he’s paid for himself when he finds write offs and other things. I’m treated like an independent contractor as a partner so may not be as complicated as a W.2, BUT a number of you have been working outside the city where you pay taxes and that can be a difference (I think—not a tax lawyer and you should pose this question in the bowls with CPAs and the big4)