I file my federal taxes for free every year using Tax Hawk online.
Discussion: Congress Is About To Ban The IRS From Offering A Free Tax Filing Service. Thank TurboTax
Indeed.
The need to file a tax return at all is fairly outdated. Most people have all their income reported in W2s or 1099ās. It would be simple enough to give each taxpayer an access code to the information the government already has in order to file a return.
The tax preparation industry is deeply non-essential to our lives. It exists as a parasite, feeding off the public with the assistance of the government.
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Just buy the software, itās like $50 for TurboTax Delux, you get 1 state with the software. Federal Filing is free, state is up to $26 with tax
Consumer-driven capitalism is a lie. Do you think customers want high fees and penalties and entrapping rules on their credit cards?
I donāt own a credit card for these very reasons.
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several interesting radio programs and podcasts on how turbo tax and other lobbyists actually support and help enact (through ALEC) more difficult tax regulations in order to intimidate humans into using a product and not doing it themselves.
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do you volunteer at A1AA or something?
It still takes second place behind the health insurance industry.
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Volunteer tax work at our local senior center, and teach all the kids/young adults lifeguarding at the facility at which I volunteer to reach 2nd graders to swim. I bring them to my house.
I believe in paying back to my community. Iām retired due to disability and canāt walk much, but at 61 can still swim a mile in 40 minutes.
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No, no-one who can read needs software or a website or any of that crap. I just manually completed my taxes for the 42 year and I am not employed in any financial position. Just read the damned instructions, people, and fill out the form. No way in hell would I EVER pay someone to do my taxes when it is so very easy! However, if you find you canāt read well enough to figure out the very basic instructions, I suggest you sue whatever school district you attended as they clearly failed in allowing you to graduate.
I have done my taxes āmanuallyā (i.e., paper and pencil/pen) for 42 years. Never once have I had an issue.
Only idiots complain their taxes are ātoo complicated.ā Or lazy people that canāt be bothered to read the instructions, which are NOT complicated.
I had always wondered why the IRS had never offered that option. Now I know: itās all about the Benjamins, baby.
They did the same thing with the National Weather Service. Private companies use the NWS data compiles with tax dollars to develops weather apps and graphics, and the NWS is prohibited from doing anything that competes with the commercial services.
Crap.
Actually if you have a simple return both state and federal are free.
I think everyone needs to go read why the House approved the bill. There was way more upside to passing it.
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Exactly. I remember being excited way back about eFiling being instituted and then discovering that you are forced to endure 3rd party products in order to make use of it. And make use of it you must - if you file a paper return now, it delays refunds for literally months, and thatās assuming you donāt make any errors.
The reason we donāt have easy, transparent, direct filing is that it is directly politically advantageous for an awful lot of lawmakers to make it difficult, exasperating, and punitive for lower and middle income voters.
Why? Because that allows them to point to use peopleās interactions with the IRS as examples of dealing with ābig governmentā. Itās an ideological tenet that people should have as much difficulty as possible paying their taxes, that it seem unfair and arbitrary, that it seem to be run by unfeeling and incompetent bureaucrats with agendas against them.
They want people to hate the idea of taxes by making the process of paying them as difficult and unfair as possible. They donāt want to give up the demand for āreformā, or for making it less of a burden, by actually making it less of a burden. Because then their go-to political cudgel would be moot.
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I have been using TurboTax for about 13 years. I love it. Itās easy to use and data is transferred automatically from my previous years taxes. For my SCorp I paid $159. My personal taxes were $85. Last year I paid a CPA and it cost me $985 just for the SCorp filing and there was nothing at all special with it. Most CPAs and accountants use TurboTax or like product to file their clientsā taxes. That said I think the IRS should provide free software at least for the new shortened Form 1040. But then again you can file for free if that is the form you use.
Well good for you.
Back when I was in school it was still a legally unsettled issue whether waived tuition for graduate assistants counted as income for tax purposes. It was the difference between not owing anything and the equivalent to a few months of actual, as in money-on-a-paycheck, salary. The IRS instructions on the matter were insane. Weaseling around an answer in a way that would make Bob Barr proud. (Basically, word of mouth conventional wisdom was roll the dice and pray they didnāt rule against ignoring it as income; the Supreme Court I think did eventually rule in our favor.)
I still have issues with IRS. Even with those damn tax prep programs, Iām suddenly hit with questions about whether or not something is a qualified plan or if schedule such-and-such applies. I remember one year we had non-retirement capital gains for the first time due to a brief profit-sharing thing when my spouseās employer was publicly traded for a short time. I was ready to pay an accountant to figure it out. The amount I was dealing with was literally less than $3 - but I was terrified of making a mistake. The IRS guidance was a joke for someone like me who didnāt even know the terminology. Not my field, lol.
Iāve had to do the FAFSA twice now. Honestly, if thatās an example of what the IRS would do, Iām not going to get too upset about TurboTaxā¦
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Especially if you donāt have any income*, donāt have any savings**, donāt own anything***, or donāt bother paying. (Insert eye roll.)
* ā¦thatās not, you know, under-the-table.
** ā¦thatās not, you know, under-the-mattress
*** ā¦thatās not, you know, also under-the-table
There are several ways to do it electronically, and without paying anyone. Check out freefilefillableforms.com for instance. Iāve been using them the last couple of years. They provide electronic versions of the forms you are familiar with. They do all the math for you, but otherwise you have to put the numbers in the fields. When you are done you send it electronically to the IRS. They do some kind of verification and might reject it with an error message. Once they accept it, you just wait for the refund.
A few years ago I got a letter from the IRS (in June of that filing year IIRC) pointing out that Iād neglected to include some small thing and therefore owed an extra $8 in tax, along with $0.23 in penalties. If you knew that, why didnāt you just figure it out in the first place??
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