they aren’t the ones who made taxes so complicated
Well, they aren’t the ONLY ones, but they’ve definitely contributed to the complexity of tax law. It’s in their interest for taxes to be hard to figure out.
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Yeah, you can add me to this category. When it comes to filing for free, brick-and-mortar H&R Block isn’t an option. But their online service is, and involves jumping through less hurdles than Turbo Tax.
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If you have over a certain amount invested in T. Rowe Price, they provide deep-discounts on TurboTax to the point that Deluxe is free and Premier is $10. State still costs, but only $40 for my VA filing.
Tried it once, back in about 1990, and it made a huge mistake with my state taxes. I never used it again.
I started using something called FreeTax USA years ago when I couldn’t find the free TurboTax option. It’s free for me with my self employment tax and business income and everything. It works fine. Don’t know who owns it.
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Just a heads-up for other folks, after checking out their website:
FreeTaxUSA is free for federal. To add state, they charge $12.95.
The efficiency of privatization
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Greetings from Brazil, where you can really file your taxes for free using free software developed by the federal government.
Also: lower income families don’t even need to file at all due to exemptions.
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Oh they certainly have an interest in it and lobby to do so, but they don’t cast votes or sign legislation. I don’t blame lobbyists for lobbying, I blame congress-critters for how they vote.
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By the way, if you want to make sure you’re using a legit, IRS-backed free filing option, check this page on the IRS’s website.
Advanced warning: H&R Block isn’t listed there anymore, so their “free” offering will almost certainly nickel-and-dime you at some point if you have a situation that’s even remotely different than “W-2 income and nothing else”.
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I used FreeTaxUSA this year, have some family related flex spending accounts, student loan interest and special state deductions for home and college savings accounts.
Free federal, $13 state. Incredibly easy and friendly UI. Turbotax wanted $90. I pity the fool who uses Turbotax.
I’ve used Free Fillable Forms for years, but I wouldn’t describe it as especially “easy.” It’s basically exactly as complex as if you filled out the old paper forms by hand, plus when you go to submit them you sometimes receive weird indecipherable error messages through email saying that you form was rejected, giving you an unexplained error code that you have to google in order to find out the rejection was due to some trivial, unimportant detail in the way you typed an employer address on the W2 or whatever. It really feels like the system is designed to be as painful as possible. In comparison, my state’s free online filing system is much easier and more intuitive.
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Ditto. I used Turbotax for a year or two, until I got burned doing it one time where at the very end of the whole process they charged me, and threatened to throw out all the work I’d done if I didn’t pay up. Since then I’ve used H&R Block, and so far haven’t had issues 
.
Yikes. Thanks for the heads-up!
I interviewed about ten independent accountants in my area a few years ago. Guess what company’s software they all used? I figured I’d rather do it myself.
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Canadian here: I am a very satisfied long-time paying customer of Turbotax in Canada. To me their product is beautifully-designed and worth every penny.
I have no idea why people pay hundreds of dollars to have their taxes done.
H&R Block online I get my taxes for state and federal done within about an hour and a half and I don’t need to read any booklets they walk through every eventuality on screen and it makes things really easy.
Ironically its local taxes i find a huge pita.
Why the hell do we have to file taxes three times in the United States every year? Is it like this in every state? PA is like this. I wish it was all on one online free system, damn tax prep lobbiests!
I still say this even though my girlfriend’s occupation is working for a law firm mainly in the work of handling tax returns for union members
Yep, what @Otherbrother says.
And thanks to @8-p for pointing out these forms last year (the 1st time since 2002 or so that I did not use Turbotax). I’m in MD where state taxes can also be filed online at no charge.
For most people, it’s free to file your taxes
Is this one of those American jokes I’m too European to understand?
How we pay taxes in the UK. Step one: don’t do anything, because your employer already paid your income tax when they paid you.
Even the people I know who are self employed just fill out their tax return on the HMRC website and they’re done.
I’m a pretty high earner with relatively uncomplicated income and a fairly common situation- part of my income is a long term retention incentive in the form of restricted stock in my employer. I used TurboTax this year and noticed it screwed up the RSUs. Essentially it double taxed me because the grant value and taxes paid on it are included in my W2 but the brokerage handling the stock also sends a 1099B when you sell the shares that doesn’t include the basis already accounted for on the W2. I had to manually change the basis in TurboTax and it certainly wasn’t something it prompted me to check (unlike the other bizarre situations it always asks about- are you a third generation farmer living on a brownfield with solar panels? Ok, just wanted to make sure.)
If I hadn’t caught the error I would have overpaid about $12k in taxes, although it was pretty obvious something was wrong when the software said I owed five figures to the IRS.
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