They already have this in some form, its called “free fillable forms”, and it sucks. For example if there is any minor issue like something off by a cent it fails to submit and won’t tell you which field has an error or what the error is. Although its not officially maintained by the IRS, I don’t think… if i recall Intuit maintains it as part of an (arguably nefarious) agreement with the IRS. It’s presumably intentio…
yeah, I had to submit an amended return because free fillable forms decided to discard a form and went through with the submission anyway :(
You can fill out the forms manually for free? It just sucks.
I've thought about doing that before just to say that I've done it, but it always seemed a bit intimidating. I also have completely illegible handwriting now, so filling anything in by hand is effectively a non-starter.
You can fill in a PDF form rather than writing it by hand.
FWIW, FreeTaxUSA[0] is much cheaper than Intuit and has worked great for me the past few years. I find it slightly easier than TurboTax, in fact. [0] https://www.freetaxusa.com/
sorry... cheaper? surely a place called free tax usa would be free?
I've used FreeTaxUSA since 2014 and I've never had to pay for federal, but I have had to pay something for state file. I think it's around $20.
Jackson Hewitt Online isn't terribly pricey (Cost me a total of about $25 last year), so that's what I've used for the last two years. Keep in mind that Jackson Hewitt Online is a different thing that the vanilla Jackson Hewitt Still, I kind of feel annoyed that I have to pay any amount of money to do something legally required of me to avoid going to jail. I think the IRS should provide a free option for filing, and…
FreeFillableForms (.com) is 100% free, has no income limits, has every IRS schedule & form. It's basically backed by the IRS and implemented by Intuit et al, but appears independent. It works a little better every year, but you do still have to manually carry over some numbers from form to form. I've been using it for the last 8 years at least. I don't love it to death, but if it wasn't available I'd do my own paper…
FreeFillableForms is basically like doing the paper forms by hand and it's much easier to make a mistake than using something like turbotax. I've used both that and the excel files at https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home in the past but I realized that the hassle if I screwed something up was much worse than paying for tax prep software.
I'm very glad that the IRS is going to be making something that's more comparable to turbotax now.
This is great news; no matter how restricted it may be initially, I think having a "guaranteed-free" tax filing system will be great for most people, especially lower-income people. The private companies have demonstrated pretty clearly that they will do everything they can to avoid people actually having free tax filing, and while ~$50-100 might not seem like a ton of money, keep in mind that at the current United S…
Just print out the sheet from your broker of all the trades you did with the end result of gains circled. Send that in. You should be ok from doing anything more complex.
are you referring to like when you do summarized trades? or something else?
See, this is the thing that gets me. For almost anyone who fits in this box, you shouldn't have to file in the first place . Not "shouldn't have to pay", but literally, "should not have to send documents to the government telling them how much you owe them" - because they already have all of that information . They should just give you an itemized breakdown and ask if it's correct.
Yeah, this has been my frustration too; I got audited by the IRS in 2021 because I forgot to declare stock sales, and so I owe about $8,000: $7,000 for the missing taxes and a $1,000 fine. I wasn't terribly mad about the money (if I owe $7,000 then that's what I owe, it was my fault), but what I was mad about was the fact that I had to do anything in 2021 at all. If the IRS knows enough to know what I owe them, then…
They don’t know enough to know how much you owe them, but they do know that you got $xx,xxx from a brokerage account and that the tax would be $7,000 unless there were some things unknown to them that would make it a lower amount. You didn’t tell them about any of those things, so they assumed the full amount but were perfectly willing to be shown that that this assumption was wrong.
Jackson Hewitt Online isn't terribly pricey (Cost me a total of about $25 last year), so that's what I've used for the last two years. Keep in mind that Jackson Hewitt Online is a different thing that the vanilla Jackson Hewitt Still, I kind of feel annoyed that I have to pay any amount of money to do something legally required of me to avoid going to jail. I think the IRS should provide a free option for filing, and…
You can fill out the forms manually for free? It just sucks.
I can also walk down to the nearby river to launder my clothes and carry back water to prepare food for my family. Instead we use technology to save time and improve our lives. That we continue to allow corrupt businesses to hold us back so a few people can extort/profit is a testament to our failed state.
Before everyone gets too excited: This will probably only apply to simple tax situations: If you have more than these, you might not be able use it: #Income reporting W-2 wage income Social Security and railroad retirement income Unemployment compensation Interest of $1,500 or less #Credits Earned Income Tax Credit Child Tax Credit Credit for Other Dependents #Deductions Standard deduction Student loan interest Educa…
w2 only would mean independent contractors , like gig workers, won't be able to use it, right? since they get 1099's and not w2's?
I gave FTuasa a go after seeing it mentioned here a lot. Unfortunately it seems the investment part is very manual compared to TurboTax. I have a couple of robotrader , brokerage accounts etc. on TurboTax it’s a few clicks and that’s imported, FTusa is tediously transcribing numbers off dozens of forms that I have no idea if I’m doing it right. I reluctantly gave money to TT again.
Relative a of FreeTaxUSA employee here. I'll let her know. She cares about UX.
Personally, my pain point is the mail-in Form 8453 that comes with the "summary" option. I'd wish for a PDF upload option instead. At least two competitor products have this capability: