81–90 of 135 posts
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I used FreeTaxUSA with a Wealthfront account that had stock trading. Wasn’t charged.
FreeTaxUSA is strangely under-mentioned on these threads. I’ve used it the last couple years with a complex-ish situation. Not a single complaint.
So many people offering explanations, and yet not a single one of them answers the OP's question. If you're upset that Intuit is engaging in lobbying (as you should be!), that might be an appropriate answer for a different question (eg: why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?). Again, I am not defending Intuit's involvement in politics, but that's not the answer to the dark patterns ques…
For many if not dare I say most TurboTax is among the cheapest because it is free. The fact is if your situation is simple (a W-2 and the standard deduction) then you can get away with just about anything. The truth is the IRS doesn't send reports because this country is obsessed with deductions. Your income (which the IRS does know about) is a small factor in the entire equation. Ironically, under Trump's tax cuts,…
So many people offering explanations, and yet not a single one of them answers the OP's question. If you're upset that Intuit is engaging in lobbying (as you should be!), that might be an appropriate answer for a different question (eg: why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?). Again, I am not defending Intuit's involvement in politics, but that's not the answer to the dark patterns ques…
> The least sophisticated firm just said: send us everything in a zip file. That sounded appealing until they started following up with a million questions.
That's super weird. Every year I answer a 2-page questionnaire (about 30 yes/no questions), sign an engagement letter and some authorization docs, scan those, zip up all my tax documents, and send them over. My CPA rarely needs to ask any questions of me at all, and sends me my completed return for approval in early April. It's not cheap ($1700), but the peace of mind plus the lack of need for me to do much of anything, is very much worth it. I'm fairly certain I'm saving money overall, but even if my tax bill ended up being exactly the same were I to do it myself, I'd still pay to have it done for me, with a much higher expectation of correctness.
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The government here (Spain) knows the money I make just as any government knows about its citizens. When I'm to do my taxes, I get an auto generated draft and the only thing I have to do is click the "Accept" button. You only have to fill your taxes manually if you're self employed or have some sort of earnings other than your job, in which case, the company that does you accounting, does the taxes for you too in 15…
> The government here (Spain) knows the money I make just as any government knows about its citizens. The problem the IRS is trying to solve is collecting taxes on money they don't know about. For example, if you sell illegal drugs, you should be paying tax on that income. But obviously you don't report to the government the amount of illegal drugs you sell. So they can't just send you a bill for your taxes. It is od…
So many people offering explanations, and yet not a single one of them answers the OP's question. If you're upset that Intuit is engaging in lobbying (as you should be!), that might be an appropriate answer for a different question (eg: why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?). Again, I am not defending Intuit's involvement in politics, but that's not the answer to the dark patterns ques…
"why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?" I assume because nobody would file taxes for things that the IRS was absent from their report, because now you know the IRS doesn't know about it and won't be missing it. I think TurboTax has too many partnerships and offers. It gets people because it's free or only $10 or whatever. It would be pretty easy to switch to other software, like HR Blo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the USA the government also knows the money you make. They have all the data they need to be able to generate a pre-filled draft, and taxpayers could use that as a starting point and modify it if they needed to take a large tax credit for installing solar panels, or some other such thing which the government doesn't necessarily know about. But it's against the law. The law specifically prohibits the tax agency (IR…
That was my point. They know the money you make, they can make it free and easy but they don't want to cut the middleman.
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"why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?" I assume because nobody would file taxes for things that the IRS was absent from their report, because now you know the IRS doesn't know about it and won't be missing it. I think TurboTax has too many partnerships and offers. It gets people because it's free or only $10 or whatever. It would be pretty easy to switch to other software, like HR Blo…
> I assume because nobody would file taxes for things that the IRS was absent from their report, because now you know the IRS doesn't know about it and won't be missing it. That's not why. The IRS is underfunded and overworked, so even if it had the information it needed to generate a report for everyone, it still couldn't do it. But it doesn't have that information anyway! A lot of taxable income is derived from sou…
Assuming the political will to make tax prep easy (which I know does not exist), the fix for this would be pretty simple for Congress to legislate. Sure, it would likely take a few years for all municipalities to come into compliance, but it's not like this would be difficult.
> On top of that, there are a lot of deductions that are based on information the IRS does not have, such as business expenses, moving expenses, etc. [..] The IRS still largely relies on self-reporting by taxpayers.
Sure, but there's no reason why the IRS couldn't have a website where everything it does know is pre-filled, and then could ask you about things they don't know about (and even hint at the kind of things that they wouldn't know).
> Anyone with a moderately complex tax situation (e.g. a homeowner, or someone with investment income) knows more about their tax situation than the IRS does!
Not really? My tax situation is probably "moderately complex": for 2021 I have W-2 income, contractor (1099-NEC) income, interest income, dividend income, capital gains through sales of stock, mutual funds, and bonds, RSU vesting, ESPP purchases and sales, required distributions from an inherited IRA, mortgage interest payments, charitable donations, and state, property, and estimated tax payments. I even have AMT credits I've been carrying forward and using for several years now. There is no reason, in principle, why the IRS could not be unambiguously and correctly notified of all of these things and prepare a return for me.
I hear a lot of "the IRS doesn't know X because Y isn't required to report X"... well... fix that! And I totally agree that the IRS won't know everything sometimes, especially sometimes things that would help lower someone's tax bill (like, say, deductions for business expenses). But there's nothing wrong with that; taxpayers can simply report those extra things during tax season, after doing a quick check to verify that everything the IRS does know is correct. Most other developed nations in the world have no problem with all this; the only thing that's "unique" about the US is our dysfunction.
So many people offering explanations, and yet not a single one of them answers the OP's question. If you're upset that Intuit is engaging in lobbying (as you should be!), that might be an appropriate answer for a different question (eg: why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?). Again, I am not defending Intuit's involvement in politics, but that's not the answer to the dark patterns ques…
You might want to try freetaxusa. I tried them last year and really like them.
I'd say the turbotax approach was easier to fill out, but freetaxusa was much easier to look up additional information when the guidance fell short; when I wasn't sure how to fill out turbotax's questions, figuring out which box it applied to so I could look up more information was supremely frustrating.
Specifically, I was freelancing the previous two years, and I was looking up information about itemized deductions.
So many people offering explanations, and yet not a single one of them answers the OP's question. If you're upset that Intuit is engaging in lobbying (as you should be!), that might be an appropriate answer for a different question (eg: why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?). Again, I am not defending Intuit's involvement in politics, but that's not the answer to the dark patterns ques…
I don't think that really is what OP is asking. The simple answer is that people are very fearful and confused over finances and Intuit offers tools to manage it. And they likely found very high conversion rates by offering these services midway through a very stressful process. Having a company with a strong public reputation offer services to protect your finances is likely very appealing. I think it's also unfair…