Meeting tax obligations can be complicated and time-consuming, but also costly if you get it wrong. Your time might be better spent bringing in the dough rather than counting beans.

As with any business function, when deciding how much to do yourself or whether to rely on outsiders, the threshold questions are:

• Am I competent to do it?
• Is it more economical to pay someone else?

Tracking business finances and preparing tax forms isn’t brain surgery. But it is steeped in arcane particulars involving a complex tax code. And those particulars undergo annual revisions, which even experts have a difficult time keeping up with.

If you’re up to doing it yourself, plan on calculating, estimating and filing tax forms at least four times a year.

There are aids to ease the pain. Intuit® makes two of the most popular and industry-leading small business accounting software programs, Quicken ($80) and QuickBooks ($380). Quicken suffices for many small businesses, while QuickBooks is better for those larger or more complex.

Both packages work seamlessly with Intuit’s own tax preparation software, TurboTax ($70), which automates much tedious entry and classifying, as do competitors’ products such as Abacus Tax Software or ProSystem FX by CCH Inc.

Even if you choose to hire a tax preparer or to have an accountant do your taxes, automated software smooths out the process.

The bottom line is whether the expense (including your most irreplaceable asset, your time) is worth it.

If your hourly fee is $100 and it takes you six hours to do your taxes, it’s cheaper to hire a $40-an-hour expert who can do it in half the time.

But if you’re a numbers whiz, not intimidated by tax forms and can do it more cheaply, do it yourself. Otherwise, it may be more productive and economical to contract out at least the tax preparation, if not for all your bookkeeping.