If all goes well, the IRS should be able to do a simple tax prep service for most Americans for free next year π€π€
It's really freaking stupid that Intuit has commandeered the tax prep market for almost 3 decades now
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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*that companies have owned the government. FTFY.
FreeTaxUSA for me as well. Very easy to use and it's free for federal. Hopefully they don't end up the same way eventually.
I've used them for many years. Like you said, free for federal and I think $15 if you want them to file state/local which I am happy to pay. I know I can do it free online but it's a cheap convenience.
There is usually a 10% off promo code floating around to get it from $15 to $13.50. But hey, $1.50 is $1.50
There's been a big price jump in their add-ons. Deluxe is $7.99 and audit defense is $19.99 (used to be included in deluxe, which was even a bit less)
My only gripe with it after trying it this year is that it makes you go through the first few steps of filing for state, without iniially asking you if you were planning on paying the fee for state filing.
Even completely ignoring this settlement, you shouldn't be using them. They lobby the government to make taxes more difficult, thus funneling people toward them since they simplify the process. They make money off of making your life harder.
Second this. Also link to relevant Cory Doctorow article for those interested: https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/
Personally, last year my taxes were somewhat complex, but I filed my taxes using the fillable electronic forms alone anyways; IRS actually nicely corrected mistakes I made on the tax form and sent me back a check... For most ppl you can probably just go to a random free provider as suggested by the IRS.
No need to use TurboTax for anything unless tax situation is super complex & you can't/don't want to read the IRS instructions
Good on your state for pushing back
For Canadians, there are lots of alternatives, too.
I like Wealth Simple the best. Their business model is pay by donation when you're done (optional), or they try to funnel you into their investment platform. The tax service is basically a loss leader to try to get people to invest with them, and there's an ad screen near the end trying to get you to use your return to set up an investment account with them. Completely skipable in one click.
The CRA has a list of other options, too:
Is it really that hard to do your own taxes? I was taught to do this in school and it's really not hard if all you have to do is write in how much money you made and then claim the standard deduction. If your taxes really are that messy then you can hire an accountant to do it, and they'll do it ten times better than any tax software could, because if the software could do it better then they'd bloody use the software.
Edit: was mostly referring to people who work a job and that's it, which is probably 80% of the population
Guess you donβt have stock sales.
I used a paid prepared once. They used a program and I had to teach THEM how to handle RSU income.
Took longer and cost 10x as just doing it myself in FreeTaxUSA.
Or God forbid a wash sale.
I tried my hand at trading options once (don't do it kids) and ended up needing to mail 100 pages to the IRS (snail mail, like in an envelope)
That was my experience using robo advisors too, like betterment. I had so many buy and sells I had to mail my return in on paper, it sucked.
Yes. My taxes are insanely complicated. I do not have the attention to detail or time to do it myself.
Tax accountant wants 1800 to do it and I've had multiple people fuck it up before.
turbo tax wants 150. It takes me less than two hours. It's only been fucked up once due to an rsu maturing in a different state and clicking us over into a different qualification for dual state income
Also with our income we don't qualify for free
It has its place as a tax software and since it works I see no reason to spend time looking for a new one
TT has twice tried to massively overtax me because of bugs in RSU and mortgage calculations.
FreeTaxUSA for me.
Have a high yield savings account? Have an investment account? A house with a mortgage? Finding somebody that has none of those is much more rare than somebody who has one of those.
And now you've got: Your standard 1040. Your W-2. Schedule A to deduct the house mortgage, property taxes, etc. Schedule B to report your interest and dividends. Schedule D for capital gains and losses (which still frequently come up even if you didn't make any transactions all year). 1099-INT from your savings account. 1099-DIV from your investment account.
And that's just the super super common stuff that tens of millions of Americans are filling out each year. There's still more and more byzantine steps for other common cases that aren't quite as common as the ones I've listed above. Have split custody of a child? You're going to be reading and reading through multiple pages of instructions to determine 1) if you can claim them as a dependent 2) if you can claim them for the child tax credit 3) if you can claim them for EITC.
And that's not even getting into the number of places where the instructions are basically to fill out long sections of forms two different ways and then only use one of the two based on the final number. All the work and effort for the other one just gets thrown away. But they can't just tell you which way to do it up front because there's no way to know until you get that final number both ways.
I was definitely intimidated at first, but after taking a peek at FreeTaxUSA I realized that it's literally filling out a form based off documents that you received so I've become more accustomed to it. It's definitely not something my cohort was taught in school.
Imo, no, and that's with selling stocks and such. As long as you know what box goes where it's really not too bad, just time-consuming at times. I use FreeTaxUSA for state and federal, and I think it's worth it. I feel like the whole "taxes are incredibly difficult" apply if there are a lot of edge cases surrounding deductions and the like, but to your point if you're doing standard deductions you can definitely do them on your own.
Do you do a backdoor Roth IRA? Between that and stock sales, last time I tried freetaxusa it wasn't possible.
No, standard taxes are easy. Doing them online is the hard part.
Then do them on paper?? Do people really like pretending that writing things on a piece of paper or editing & printing a PDF and then mailing it in is difficult?
I fail to see why you have an issue here. It's stupid easy and the government has all the info it needs for most people. Why advocate for wasted time just because it's wasted time on an easy task. I don't care that it's easy. I care that it is wasteful.
Itβs not a case of difficulty so much as itβs a case of a more rapid refund. When you mail in your return it can take up to 2 months to get your return, if you have one coming, where the online services such as TT & FreetaxUSA can get it directly in the itβs computer allowing for a more rapid refund
Yes, that is inconvenient and slow and therefore not as easy or as quick as doing them online.
They also charge you to access a copy of last year's tax returns :/
I do use TurboTax, but I'm patching it up so it lets me file federally and state for free. I feel like since they lobbied so heavily to make taxes difficult to require special software they owe me for that.
Lol love it!
Obligatory non-American comment on "Americans pay to do taxes? to a private business? wtf?".
I wish things get simpler for you guys. Where I live, it's simply visiting a website once a year and click through the web forms that already have everything filled in. And it's free.