I haven’t used TurboTax recently, but I just received a check from my state’s government saying that they’ve settled with Intuit over charging customers tax return services that should have been free.
This angers me greatly at how scummy TurboTax and Intuit have become over the years. For alternatives, I’ve been using FreeTaxUSA but I’m sure there are others that people can recommend.
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.
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 don’t 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)
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.
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.
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?
It’s not a case of difficulty so much as it’s 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 it’s computer allowing for a more rapid refund
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
If all goes well, the IRS should be able to do a simple tax prep service for most Americans for free next year 🤞🤞
It’s really freaking stupid that Intuit has commandeered the tax prep market for almost 3 decades now
Good on your state for pushing back
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
