If your taxes are simple, pencil and paper. I remember my dad doing tax prep using this method for us and all of his brothers’ families. The dining room table would be covered in paper for a couple of weeks- no ones taxes were simple. He was in the big middle of it, with an adding machine- paper roll and all- furiously scribbling numbers into boxes. He’d deny it today, but I think that was his favorite time of year. He uses turbo tax today- even though his taxes are way simpler than back then…