Well said @dkh .  IMO that's one of the biggest problems with this tax season.  I'm having to spend a lot of time trying to keep up with day-to-day developments when I could be spending that time preparing tax returns incorrectly instead. 🙂

It's never a good idea to rely on the software anyway but especially this year, I guarantee that every piece of tax software on the market has been doing something wrong at some point in this tax season.  I have a spreadsheet I use to calculate the tax result that I expect the tax software to have.  If they don't match then between me and the software one or both of us has done something wrong.  Either entered something wrong, did the math wrong, misunderstood the law or sometimes all of the above.

Being that we're in what I call the "misinformation era", most "news" is at the very least incomplete, possibly misleading, and sometimes just downright incorrect.  So even after I read an article I have to validate it with other sources.  And with a lot of the new stuff there aren't always other valid sources because we really just don't know yet (especially when it comes to states).

Today's example:  VA Tax announced the postponed deadline to file and pay of 5/17.  Prior to this week we were waiting on the General Assembly to meet and pass a law that gave the Governor authority to waive interest charges in a disaster area.  I assume that since VA Tax sent out the bulletin today that the bill was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.  But I haven't verified that yet (and don't really need to until after 4/15).  The email came into my inbox today so it still has to go through triage.  What priority is this, does it affect anything I'm doing today, does it change the priority of anything I was planning on doing today or this weekend?

Has anyone found a mental health facility that specializes in tax accountants?  (I'm probably kidding.  Or maybe I'm still at step 0 on the road to recovery and not ready to admit that I have a problem!)