TurboTax is disgusting. I used them for a few years in the past due to their great marketing and easy to use website. But they pulled a bait & switch on me last year, at the last minute (after I had done everything) I was required to pay north of $120 to actually file.
The problem isn't that they want money to use their software, it's that they're not upfront about it. Free is thrown in your face about 100 times during the process and then they surprise you right at the end after you've already invested a bunch of your time.
My taxes are dead simple - I just don't trust myself or care enough to file without some software assistance. This year I'm using a different company who appears to be much less shady and will never use TurboTax again. I hope TurboTax making my money once was enough to lose me as a customer for life. In reality I hope the company ceases to exist in the near future, but that seems unlikely.
I'm excited at the prospect of free & open source tax software - for next year maybe.
You basically type your numbers in and it does the math for you. Then you print it out and mail it in. It can't do anything complex, though.
In my experience (Minnesota), state filing is even easier, usually just copying numbers from your federal form and doing one table lookup. No reason to give the shitty companies more money.
Thank you, that actually appears to be much more user friendly than I would have imagined. When I think of government websites I think I'm still stuck in the mindset of government websites 10 years ago (aka absolutely horrible). I've been surprised at how good things have gotten regarding them a few times, so I guess I need to snap out of that mindset.
While looking over the requirements and supported forms I didn't find anything about student loans (form 1098E), would you happen to know if that method is compatible with them?
Free Fillable Forms supports every tax form as far as I'm aware.
It's really no different from doing your taxes by hand on paper, except it does almost all the math for you.
I've been using it for years (with about 15 different various forms) simply because I refuse to support the tax prep software companies out of principle.
And each year I just look at the previous year's which I saved as PDF for reference in case I forget which number goes where.
Thats exactly what I got that I felt like the Article didnt seem to get.
Turbo Tax is required to abide by the FreeFile rules. this means that for some customers their software is required to be free.
By some customers I mean like 60%.
So TurboTax moved to seeing their product as an upsell game, start at free and UHOH! You have to pay us! To that they dont have to be upfront because they 'Didn't know you made too much'.
Now, this is where things get fun. How does TurboTax get you to pay?
Three ways:
1. Have your info on file so you don't need to enter it.
2. Make sure to place the payment step at the VERY end of the process when you are deep into the system and offer ways to pay it via your return.
3. Agressive UI and UI dark patterns to make the software appear to work harder and be more trustworthy and to make you feel as if you put in more involvement. There are numarous animations stating things like 'Verifing your maximum money back' and such that are all false loading screens. It all makes the customer trust it more while it's just wasting their time.
TurboTax is a bait and switch company that for many is free and makes their customer feel like they did the work. You can't compete with that concept by offering an automatic engine with no involvement becasue the customer will think it's wrong or they are being screwed and any upfront cost to cover development will make the customer think your product costs more.
Another way is how they have two "free" sites: One called "IRS Free File Program by Turbotax" and one called "Turbotax Free Edition". The free file version of Turbotax is only accessible from the IRS free file webpage (they block it from search engine results) and has a limit on annual income, but (as far as I know, I file on paper) it does not have as many upsells as "Turbotax Free Edition", which has a different (higher) annual income limit and gets advertised like crazy by Turbotax. This obviously creates customer confusion and people get tricked into using the wrong version.
Intuit (owner of TurboTax) was sued over this because they had some of the darkest patterns imaginable around FreeFile. They blocked search engines from finding it using robots.txt. They would show a page where only 1 tiny link brought you to the free site, while all others switched you back to the paid one.
Pro Publica did some excellent reporting on this in 2019 and they seem to have made it one of their pet projects.
You're not required to pay anything if your taxes are 'dead simple' you can fill out 1040EZ for free. And still can still compare turbo tax for free to see if you got the same numbers, and send it in for free. Nobody forces you to pay. I did that when I was single.
Nowadays, its complicated. Mortgage deductions, rental income and depreciation, independent contractor, children, jointly filing. I could attempt to do that on my own but it would take hours and I likely would leave money on the table. In my use case I am more than happy to pay a hundred bucks. It's actually less if you file early too, and its deductible in your next years tax liability... I don't understand why everyone here wants to kill Turbo Tax. It makes my life easier and less stressful around tax season.
1040-EZ and 1040-A were eliminated in 2018, so pretty much everyone uses 1040 now (which was probably simplified, I haven't compared). There's also 1040-SR for seniors.
> And still can still compare turbo tax for free to see if you got the same numbers, and send it in for free.
That's what I do for state, since my state has a relatively simple tax structure and offers free online e-file. For federal my situation is similar, I'm happy to pay someone < $100 to deal with all the schedules and calculations and make sure things are consistent. An accountant would be much more, and inertia keeps me with TurboTax, for better or worse.
TurboTax Deluxe comes in a version that includes a state filing, and one that doesn't. There is a $10 price difference, but if you get the Federal only one, the price to add a state filing is much more than $10. Last year, the listings on Amazon were very hard to distinguish, and my father, who is pretty tech savvy for his generation, bought the Federal only one by accident, so state filing cost him much more. It seems like the Amazon listings are a bit more clear this year, but the whole thing put a sour taste in my mouth last year, and I switched away from TurboTax.
The problem isn't that they want money to use their software, it's that they're not upfront about it. Free is thrown in your face about 100 times during the process and then they surprise you right at the end after you've already invested a bunch of your time.
My taxes are dead simple - I just don't trust myself or care enough to file without some software assistance. This year I'm using a different company who appears to be much less shady and will never use TurboTax again. I hope TurboTax making my money once was enough to lose me as a customer for life. In reality I hope the company ceases to exist in the near future, but that seems unlikely.
I'm excited at the prospect of free & open source tax software - for next year maybe.