I'm the only American I know that does my own taxes. I've never paid anyone to do them. I've never use software to do it. I print the form, and fill it out with a pen. It only takes me a few minutes. I even filed my own C corporation taxes once long ago. I'm not a CPA or tax lawyer or in any line of work related to taxes.
My handwriting is terrible; I'd at least want to use a form-fillable PDF, and having the ability to copy/paste figures between forms and a digital calculator would make me feel better about not making arithmetic or transcription errors.
I used to use TaxAct to do my taxes, but unfortunately they aren't simple enough anymore that I even feel comfortable using that without making a mistake. I just got my completed return back from my CPA the other day, and there are (required) things he did on there that I definitely would not have known how to do, even with the prompts in tax-prep software. If I had to puzzle through IRS form instructions, it'd be even more of a mess.
I actually did decide to look up one of the more confusing things my CPA did by reading some IRS form instructions, and it confused me beyond belief. I asked him about it and his explanation sounded reasonable, but there's no way I would have figured it out on my own. The US tax system is so messed up.
I used to do those, but honestly, it's just easier to do it with pen and paper. Either there is automath in the form that screws up if you fill in a field out of order, or they make the form so it cannot be saved. PDF editing software sucks too. It's very unfriendly on Linux. I would suffer through it when I used OS X, because I worried about legibility in the small boxes. I'd never go back to that now. It's a huge pain. The pen is mightier than the keyboard with tax forms.
