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IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

irs.gov

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Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#21

Post by throwaway98797 »

sublinear wrote: post #12
bobro wrote: post #7

I tried the fillable forms in previous years. They certainly aren’t easy and don’t make you confident you are filing an accurate form. Paying $50-100 to save a few hours and a lot of worrying is well worth it to me, even if along the way I bemoan the complexity and inaccessibility of the current tax system.

No offense intended, but my taxes must be a lot simpler than yours because I do the Free File forms in about 30 minutes every year.

1099s, K1s, SEPs, list goes on

add in retirement trusts owned by self directed IRAs invested in leveraged real estate and id love to see a 30 min tax return

i pay $1k and spend a few hours setting data up to give to the accountant

oh let’s not even consider the mess crypto or poker winnings are

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#22

Post by KyleJune »

wespad wrote: post #19

https://www.freetaxusa.com/ and their parent company https://www.taxhawk.com/ They charge $14.99 for the state filing. Usually a coupon code available. Or go to the state's website (CA at least), and file that for free, too. But for the convenience of not having to input my info again, I'll pay their fee.

At what point is it recommended to not use a software like freetaxusa? I've been using it for years.

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#23

Post by paxys »

yawnxyz wrote: post #3

What's the reasoning for setting the AGI at $73,000 or less? Does it go up as inflation goes up? Why not set it at $100,000 or $500,000?

I'm assuming they picked the percent/number of people who should be covered and worked out where the AGI cutoff was to hit it.

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#24

Post by creato »

bobro wrote: post #7

I tried the fillable forms in previous years. They certainly aren’t easy and don’t make you confident you are filing an accurate form. Paying $50-100 to save a few hours and a lot of worrying is well worth it to me, even if along the way I bemoan the complexity and inaccessibility of the current tax system.

Even if you screw it up the IRS will just charge you interest “penalties” or give you your money back if you overpay (both have happened to me). I’ve straight up forgotten forms and paid maybe a few extra dollars in interest, I wouldn’t even call it a penalty.

People are generally way more afraid of the IRS than they should be. People that hate the IRS for being unreasonable are very likely aggressively reporting deductions or whatever, not just making typos on their freefillableforms.com return.

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#25

Post by geoelectric »

coderintherye wrote: post #9
bobro wrote: post #7

I tried the fillable forms in previous years. They certainly aren’t easy and don’t make you confident you are filing an accurate form. Paying $50-100 to save a few hours and a lot of worrying is well worth it to me, even if along the way I bemoan the complexity and inaccessibility of the current tax system.

I'm not going to claim they are easy, but they are accurate (they have a Do The Math calculation button). Even if you mess up, the IRS will typically send you a response noting where their calculations diverged from yours and offer to automatically adjust. (Which denotes the absurdity of this exercise for most taxpayers because the IRS already has all the information it needs to complete your taxes).

Wonder what the minimum information you could put in, and how accurate it'd have to be, to get that response. It'd be cool if you could lifehack your way into getting the IRS to do your taxes just by sending something obviously wrong that they'd autocorrect into the final product! Then we'd be roughly on parity with more sane countries that just send you a tax bill.

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#26

Post by FatActor »

olliej wrote: post #2

Remember H&R Block, TurboTax, etc have all been caught tricking people into paying for free services, so watch out when using them if you are expecting free filing. Of course, this doesn't change the US Tax code being intentionally designed to be easy to make errors that can lead to significant fines.

I've been using TT for decades. Their "tricks" are basically asking you 2 or three times during the process if you want to pay for a new feature. Pretty lame for tricks. But annoying still.

Also: just be rich. They don't investigate non-billionaires. Jeez.

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#27

Post by paxys »

coderintherye wrote: post #8
yawnxyz wrote: post #3

What's the reasoning for setting the AGI at $73,000 or less? Does it go up as inflation goes up? Why not set it at $100,000 or $500,000?

Note, anyone regardless of AGI can use https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... It fails on some really specific use cases, but it works for the vast majority.

On the other hand, paying 20 bucks just for a better user interface and a step-by-step guide is absolutely worth the money.

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#28

Post by judge2020 »

mindslight wrote: post #13

This reminds me it's time to start looking for the TurboTax torrent. The activation scheme is remarkably straightforward to crack yourself.

I'm surprised they still have the desktop version tbh. Do that many people prefer downloading and installing the software?

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#29

Post by moneywoes »

KyleJune wrote: post #22
wespad wrote: post #19

https://www.freetaxusa.com/ and their parent company https://www.taxhawk.com/ They charge $14.99 for the state filing. Usually a coupon code available. Or go to the state's website (CA at least), and file that for free, too. But for the convenience of not having to input my info again, I'll pay their fee.

At what point is it recommended to not use a software like freetaxusa? I've been using it for years.

Being a US citizen abroad. I’m in this situation and have had to pay huge sums to accountants

If anyone has any recommendations I’m all ears

Re: IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free

#30

Post by tekla »

azinman2 wrote: post #20
tekla wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS is not actually a godly being that has omniscient knowledge of every transaction that ever goes on and in the future. How is the IRS supposed to figure out how much money to take away from your W2 when you could get a billion dollar windfall at the end of the year and massively change tax bracket?

By following the model that Spain and other countries follow: take the information they know (which is basically everything since anything meaningful is reported), calculate it, send you what they think you owe, and you either pay it as is or you file taxes manually.

If you have a standard 1 job W2, that is... literally what already happens, except even with less steps, since they already took the money out of my paycheck.

The 1 job W2 literally takes 15 minutes to fill out if so, and it is pretty much signing off that you didn't make a million dollars on the side that the IRS doesn't know about.

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