Tax tips: Top 5 reasons to hire a tax pro

3. Your situation falls under nuanced sections of the tax code.

Jessica Hill/AP/File
Forestry School graduate Claire Schlemme, of New York, wears a decorated mortarboard during the 2011 commencement at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. When your children are in college, it can be tricky knowing whether to combine tax deductions and credits.

Even if your life hasn't been in flux lately, quirks of the tax code can sometimes warrant careful monitoring from a trained eye.

Example: If you care for an aging parent, it's worth taking a close look to see whether you can claim him or her as a dependent, even if the parent doesn't live with you, says Melissa Labant, director of tax advocacy and professional standards for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Similarly, if you have a family member pursuing postsecondary education, it can be tricky to know from year to year if and how to combine deductions and credits.

"It can be overwhelming," Ms. Labant says, "for someone who is not a professional to prepare their taxes if they have someone in college."

3 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.