If you have an income in the USA, you have to file your income tax returns no matter if you are a U.S. citizen or not, Green Card holder or not.  If you have no job, but buy and sell stocks, you also have to file income tax.  If you are an international student in the U.S., you basically do not have to file income tax returns in the first 5 yours.  But, if you buy and sell stocks in the U.S., even if you are an international student during the first 5 years, you have to file income tax.  This is because all the stock transactions are reported to the IRS, even if you are not making a profit in your stock investments. Even if you are a student or just a visitor in the U.S., you have to file your income tax. 

We use Internet and e-mails everyday.  We are in the e-world and e-business.  We should also use e-filing for our income tax too.  If you did Christmas shopping at stores like Best Buy, you should have seen some income tax software popping up on the shelves.  You know that after the New Year, you should be ready to file last year’s income tax.  Why does the IRS not have a uniform income tax software system for us to save us the trouble of choosing software?  This is because the software companies took the initiative to develop tax software before IRS even started.  They did a good job on their tax software and that formed the way income tax is today.  When e-filing started a few years ago, after you e-filed your tax, you still had to print out the tax forms attach your W2 forms, sign your 1040 form and mail them to the IRS.  The e-filing makes it easy for us today.  You don’t need to mail the signed form to the IRS any more if you do e-filing. 

It is a little bit cheaper to buy the tax software over the Internet.  Take the most popular tax software Turbo Tax for example; if you go to http://turbotax.intuit.com/ to buy and download the version of Turbo Tax Deluxe, it costs 30 bucks.  If you would rather have a CD and to buy it from a store, it would cost you 45 bucks.  Most of the taxpayers can buy the XE version of Turbo Tax.  If you have lots of stocks and real estate investments and own rental properties, you need to buy the Premier version that cost 50 bucks online.  If you own a business, you need to buy the Home and Business version that costs 75 dollars online.  You can buy other kind of tax software.  I use Turbo Tax, Tax Cut and one online version ofwww.taxslayer.com for many years.  I really like www.taxslayer.com.  I can use any form I want from their main menu very quickly.  I have taught income tax classes for many years.  We use Tax Cut for students’ tax return assignments.  Many of my students are Turbo Tax supporters.  I allow them to use Turbo Tax for their tax return assignments, too.  No downloading and installation are required if you use the online version.  Both Turbo Tax and Tax Cut have online versions too.  If you have never used tax software before, it may take you several days to learn how to use it the first time.

In today’s specialized world, we should have our jobs done by professionals.  You can fix your own plumbing problems. We still have people change their own motor oil; they buy racks and drive their cars’ front wheels on the racks to change car oils.  The same way we have people buy tax software every year and file their own taxes.  Whether to file your own tax returns or not is dependent on your personal preference.  If you are expecting tax lawsuits, you can have an attorney to file your taxes.  Your attorney will defend your tax return in court for you.  You can also have a CPA to file taxes for you.  CPAs are accounting experts who will do a good job for your tax return.  You can go to HR Block to have your tax returns filed there.  The tax prepares at the store are not CPAs, they are people trained in tax returns.  Maybe you can find volunteers to file tax returns for you for free.  If you have filed your tax returns for many years with no problems and have time, you can volunteer to be a tax return volunteer.   I am a CPA, you can ask me about income tax questions here.  I will be glad to answer your questions.