Comment lol christ (Score 1) 386
I finished mine last week, it took me over 2 months with probably 40+ active hours. My return was relatively complicated though, I own a sole-prop business, so had to close out the books on that, review all my transactions to make sure they were categorized correctly for tax purposes. Had to pull together and wait on 1099s, wait for my investment accounts to mail me their 1099-INT and DIVs. I had to issue a 1099 for a contractor I paid over $600, so figuring out that was a hassle.
Had to document all my expenses, pull together deductible stuff like ad valorem tax on my car, charitable donations, etc - then figure out the business-deductable portion of my rent and auto expenses. Had a lot of healthcare expenses and opened a HSA, so had to figure out how all that impacted my shit and how much I could deduct.
I got married last year, so then had to do all this for her, which roughly doubled the time spent. She owns a condo, which I'm now using part of as a home office, so had to figure out how that worked on my business expenses - you have to document mortgage interest payments, private mortgage insurance payments, HOA fees, blah blah blah. She was also a full time student for part of the year, and then started a new job - so figuring out education expenses and loan repayments was an annoying task as well.
Finally at the end of it all, we had to weigh the cost/benefit of making 401k/IRA contributions at the last minute, get our optimal contributions in, wire that money, make sure it was categorized as a 2013 contribution, which we're still trying to make sure is all in order.
goddamn I wish the tax code was simpler. =( In the end though, got a huge refund of a lot of estimated taxes I'd paid in. used turbotax/quicken/quickbooks to do it all.