What is the value YOU get from a CPA?

I’ve been doing our own taxes for ~15 years (and dread it every year). This year, our situation was more complicated than usual, so I decided we had more money than time and hired a firm recommended from Sam’s List (Sam Parr from Hampton) who specialize in HEs.

I was happy to pay the ~$1k to save time and have peace of mind that it would be done properly.

Except… I don’t feel like I’m saving any time. I still have to run the books for our rental property to give them breakdown of numbers. I still have to line item out child care expenses. And dig through all of our expenses to find, calculate, and list out every item on the itemized deductions — Medical expenses, Charitable contributions, est sales tax, interest, property taxes, and other business write offs… it’s all quite time consuming.

The app my CPA asks me to fill out is basically the same amount of work as when I had to do it with turbo tax myself.

I feel like I’m missing something. For those of you using CPAs, what is the value you are seeing? Are you seeing time savings? Is it normal to do all this work just to fill out the CPA requests or are you doing it a different way?

With how many people who outsource it, I can only imagine I’m going about it wrong. Help me keep my sanity please. Thanks!