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Comment by valleyjo | Hacker News Reader

Every time I pay for TurboTax I hate them even more for lobbying for this type of legislation.

I'm not affiliated but I've been using freetaxusa.com for several years now and their system does everything I need, including contract based income, capital gains, etc in the free version. State tax costs < $7 ($15 now, must have been an early file deal) if you are feeling lazy.

The copy on their product pages is also incredibly deceptive. Buying "Intuit TurboTax Deluxe 2018, Federal with State + Efile" means only the Federal Efile is included, and additional charges are involved with a state E-file. People should be filing complaints with the FTC

Credit Karma's "free" tax return service has been a surprising lack of unpleasantness. Other than having to a bit of manual copy/paste for certain income, it's a breeze for my relatively uncomplex return.

I'm not exactly certain what they are getting by providing this info except advertising for more CC and loans. One of which I used and reduced my auto loan rate(this was also to get it out of Wells Fargo's books).

Have you considered any alternatives? I use taxcut but have used sites in the past like taxbrain.

Can you pay an accountant to do your taxes instead? I do that in the UK and they cost less than the prices I see online for US tax software. I just give him a pile of pay slips and receipts and he does whatever he needs to do to fill things in.

> I do that in the UK and they cost less than the prices I see online for US tax software... and he does whatever he needs to do to fill things in.

Really? For less than $29?

TurboxTax is showing like $250 for someone with a house, a job, shares, expenses, etc. Not sure how anyone of this works so maybe I'm wrong.

The website price is rarely what someone pays in reality. Typically you buy it one year, at a store for some special price, and every year they mail you a CD with special reduced pricing to renew.

I paid $39 this year for H&R Block Deluxe, which took care of everything you listed above. Includes 5 e-files too, so you can share it with friends/family.

For the vast majority of people, filing your taxes by hand is so easy, I'm not sure why more people do not do it. It also has the side benefit of making the government pay more to collect your taxes.

The IRS is also extremely wonderful to deal with, and is happy to answer your questions. I've had questions about procedures before (even made a mistake), and you just call (or they call you) and you fix them.

> It also has the side benefit of making the government pay more to collect your taxes.

Why would that be a benefit? It means more taxpayer money is literally going to waste.

+1 to getting an accountant. TurboTax is great if you just have regular income and common deductions. I've never felt satisfied with TurboTax any time I've had a question about anything. Every year I pay an accountant twice what I paid TurboTax, I spend less time going through the process (I literally save a folder of documents and dump it on her desk) and get far more. At the beginning of the year she does my return, hands me a stack of 4 ready-to-mail envelopes with all my estimated tax vouchers filled out, reviews my withholdings mid-year with me, and works with my investment guy to make sure they're both giving me good recommendations. I have so much less mental load to deal with - I love it.

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