Probably not very secure! Do they leave your paperwork lying about the place, accessible to all, after they have completed your taxes? Are their computers adequately protected by firewalls and effective anti-virus software? Is there adequate background checks done on their employees, who obviously will have unlimited access to your sensitive personal information? The honest truth is that you really don’t know.

Also, you need to be really concerned about hackers. These criminals have been successful in hacking into supposedly very secure government computer systems; the Office of Personnel Management, and even the IRS itself come to mind immediately. These people know that they will have access to a treasure trove of personal information if they were to hack into the computers of H&R Block, Liberty Tax, or any CPA or other tax preparation office. So what is to stop them from hacking into your tax preparer’s computer, which obviously will be a lot less protected than the government’s computers?

Learning to do your own taxes is not as daunting a task as your tax professional might want you to perceive it to be. Actually, tax preparation software has come a long way in the past few years, making it so easy for you to prepare your own taxes, that it’s virtually impossible not to be able to understand the process, even with absolutely no knowledge of tax laws. There is an entire myriad of relatively inexpensive tax preparation software available today, which makes this all possible, and each will allow you to prepare and e-file multiple tax returns.

The primary objective here is to empower taxpayers to learn to do their own taxes. To assist you in taking this relatively simple but extremely important step, grab yourself a copy of “Doing Your Own Taxes is as Easy as 1, 2, 3” ($6.98) available on Taxconnections.com, in eBook format.