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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

For what it is worth, even with my medium-complex tax return I have had great results with freetaxusa.com for the past few years. The first couple of times we used it we ran the taxes through TurboTax and FreeTax at the same time and due to better UI the FreeTax version was faster and less confusing. That said, at the end of the process after entering all of the same information in the same places the TurboTax one did offer about $50 more in returns for unexplained reasons (The calculated figures were just plain different even with the same inputs, and doing the math by hand we got the FreeTax figures), but would have cost me $60 to use so we went with FreeTax instead. The second year we did the same thing and had a similar result so this year we didn't even bother.

The process is still way too hard and confusing, but at least it feels like I'm feeding one less parasite this way.

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I go with them too.

Everytime this comes up though I post this https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/

There's many nice and cheap options out there. Please, if you value basic democracy, don't give money to Intuit or TurboTax - not a dollar, not a penny. But do click on their paid ads whenever you see them and just close out after the page load. That company needs to be dismantled brick by brick, byte by byte, and deposited in the dustbin of history.

One of the things to watch out for is so many free options that are only usable if you taxes are already trivial.

Strangely enough that IRS search tool claims there are 0 options for me, even though FreeTax works just fine.

Ignore the "free" claim. Instead compare the normal price. Turbotax normal price if you're making north of 200k is what? like $150? They're going to do a deceitful hustle to try to get you to pay it like some seedy online scammer.

The other players in the industry price their competing products at $15-$20. They're upfront and there's no hidden costs.

Intuit is an extreme outlier and charges an outlandish premium to fund their dishonest lobbying efforts, lawsuit settlements for their countless crimes, invasive advertising and opulent demands of their shamelessly corrupt C-suite.

I've done it with multiple free services a couple of years and I generally got more back with H&R Block's free page, so I use them now.

I did OLT again this year. Due in part to how many click throughs they require if you aren't paying or doing state taxes through them, and due in part to significant personal distractions this year, I didn't notice that I actually hadn't filed until after April 17th, despite finishing everything but the final click-throughs in early February.

Fortunately I'm owed so shouldn't be paying any penalties for filing late. But it's still annoying.

I'm looking forward to an IRS free file system that won't require 5+ click-throughs to submit.

The deadline was the 18th this year, so you made it just in time!

No, I didn't. I filed in May after going to the "where's my refund" IRS page and getting an error.

What's up with the age limitations on some of those?

        age <= 66  FileYourTaxes.com
  20 <= age <= 64  TaxAct
        age <= 58  TaxSlayer

Maybe they don't want to deal with IRA withdrawals?

> But do click on their paid ads whenever you see them and just close out after the page load.

Might I suggest using AdNauseam instead? It's essentially just automating that in the background.

My taxes have been getting more complex every year, and after this year I no longer trust TurboTax. There was a situation where Turbotax did not recommend a tax form to me, despite me answering questions in such a way that it was clear the tax form would have been impactful and applicable.

After I filled out all of the tax information my taxes were clearly off many thousands of dollars. I had to review my tax forms, do research, talk to an accountant, and then specifically request a tax form number in the help bar of TurboTax.

I don't trust anyone! TurboTax gives me one number, my accountant gives me another, and my by-hand version is yet another that my accountant comes around to eventually. The sad part is that each party is figuring out something unique that the others didn't because it is all so complex. Each route prompts different questions, which, together, make things more accurate. I hate it.

Not only turbotax, but sometimes your brokerage firm (in case Fidelity) screws up calculating exercising options.

I would've owed $20,000 more in taxes because the software failed to account for the amount that was already withheld.

This year TurboTax apparently made a mistake. The tax calculation showed I owed tax and I submitted payment for the reported amount. IRS sent me back a check later for overpayment based on the reported tax filling by TurboTax. They didn't explain where the error was; it's just that TurboTax made a bad calculation somewhere.

Request a tax transcript and compare: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript

Another vote for freetaxusa.com. The only complexity for my Federal returns is accounting for both refunds and taxes due to filing state returns in two states (as well as some 1099 income), but they handle those exceptions well.

For years I kept a Windows VM around just to run whatever the cheapest tax return software was for that particular year.

I really hope that we can get closer to the European experience with taxes.

I was flabbergasted that when I was living in Ireland, I could do my taxes by going online, clicking a couple boxes, and hitting submit.

So you have not been to Germany, I guess.

I also switched to FreeTaxUSA this year. Same as in your case, TurboTax got the bigger refund (I was able to figure out why, in my case) … but the extra refund was completely eaten away by the higher cost. I.e., I ended up with more money with FreeTaxUSA, even though the initial return was of poorer quality. (We caught the error and it was corrected anyways … so … yeah.)

There was a state tax error, I think, in TurboTax's return. The FreeTaxUSA got that particular item more correct. (It was a bit of a debatable item, though.)

IMO TurboTax can't justify its price, vs. FreeTaxUSA.

There are some cases TurboTax can handle that FreeTaxUSA can't, if I'm not mistaken -- AMT due to early ISO exercise being one of them.

That's going to be pretty exceptional at the scale of most Americans. Even here on HN, I'd wager that's the exception: you need to be working at a ISO-awarding startup, have your ISOs vest, and have your company be doing well enough that exercising them seems like a sane fiscal decision. (… or, well, I suppose you can #yolo.) I've worked for startups for a decade, and I've yet to run into that. (Particularly since employers hold the view of "getting a raise == changing jobs"; this pretty much fixes options' value at $0.)

Curious, does your medium-complexity tax return include investments?

Yes. And green energy credit rollover. Also children and tax deferred savings accounts. My wife is also a self-employed contractor. FreeTax was able to handle all of that, albeit that some parts are still confusing. Most of the confusion comes from the contract work, but some of that is because she is actually working for a company that classifies her as a contractor to avoid paying benefits and taxes.

I've used freetaxusa for 3 years now and have the same positive experience as the parent poster.

And yeah my scenario includes investments. off the top of my head my return featured:

* income from 2 employers for the same person

* income in 2 states

* kids and the stuff that comes with that (child tax credits etc)

* capital losses (it's that time of the business cycle :< )

* interest (US treasury products)

* dividends

* mortgage stuff

So if tons of americans can just do a 1040-EZ, then I feel like my usage probably covers like 99% of the remaining folks (which I would characterize as "I could do a 1040-EZ but I have kids and stocks").

I think mine are pretty simple, but I'm still cautious. How is FreeTax with stocks, options, employee stock plans, etc...?

Can it import and parse documents from banks / investments? That's the most important part.

No. They are hosting adding a beta feature that will part W2s but it didn’t work for me.

Does this work for you? TurboTax has a 100% chance of either: (1) not working; or, (2) completely hosing my filing.

I did both freetaxusa and TurboTax and all the errors came from the supposed smart input things from turbotax.

It almost seems like its doing some pdf scan with errors underneath when i dont trust it anymore. Maybe 1 day when they have proper api read access or something.

freetaxusa.com user here as well. It's great, and cheap to file. I've paid tax specialists in the past far more with worse results.

> I've paid tax specialists in the past far more with worse results.

This was the year I decided to compare freetaxusa with a paid professional. Maybe it's just that my taxes aren't complicated enough to warrant a pro, but I'm not making the same mistake again next year.

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