Steve Suroko, CPA from CA, wrote: The most important thing I use computers for is the preparation of tax returns. Income tax is done mostly on the computer. As I prepare business tax reports, these could not be prepared by hand because of how complicated the tax law is. Computers make preparation more efficient and less costly. If I had to do it by hand, it would take at least two or three times as long, and cost much more.
We use the computers to research tax auditing. There are many different kinds of returns, so different software is needed for each. Lots of key terms are used to index the work. The computer can prepare the paperwork for each client. The only drawback of having the computer doing so many of the calculations that I can see is that the math lessons won’t get learned or reinforced as well.
The computer helps me keep track of time and expenses. The faster we can do the taxes, the faster everyone gets paid, which makes the pocketbook happy :-)