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Does anyone have a canonical resource they’d point me to for understanding how to file/optimize (personal, US/California, income) taxes?
I found the “Taxes for Dummies” book pretty poorly written; I’m enjoying reading “Taxes Made Simple” by Mike Piper, but it really only covers the basics.
Some examples of the sort of thing I’m looking for in other categories:
Get Rich Slowly — great general basic financial advice from putanumonit
Salary Negotiation — great general basic advice on salary negotiation from patio11
To Do Meetings Well — great general basic advice on how to run & participate in meetings well from Anson Yu
How to Sell — great general thoughtful framing & practical advice on doing “sales” much more effectively/naturally/calibratedly-confidently from Nabeel Qureshi
I don't use tax filing software myself so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd think the best answer is to use tax filing software (FreeTaxUSA, TurboTax, etc.). The income tax rules are simple, but coupled with a very very long list of exceptions, most of which don't apply to you. If a book or website tried to list out the most useful exceptions, most of them would still be useless to you personally. Tax filing software uses a decision tree to figure out which exceptions are relevant.
Tax filing software is annoying to use so I wish I had a better answer, but AFAIK there isn't one.
(If I don't use tax filing software, how did I learn which exceptions I need to know about? I dunno, I just kinda learned them over time. But I also have a lot of blind spots.)