TL;DR TurboTax is yellowcab, CreditKarma is Uber.
So after checking out this sub I tried both TurboTax (my typical go-to) and CreditKarma for my W2 and 1098-E forms (woo student debt) last night. The results yielded a $397 difference.
Me I would describe myself as middle-class, dad/hubby, student loans (FML) and typical rural 'Murican lifestyle.
TurboTax Experience: I've used TurboTax (TT) for about 7-8 years now. The entire experience with TT for me is about 15 minutes and pretty slick, since it grabs all your previous info and makes it so you don't need to enter all that crap again (deductions, spousal info, kids info, SSNs, etc). TT has always had an upsell feel to it (they announce prices on the front page (only $33 for delux etc) as well as during the process itself (wouldn't it be awesome if you paid xx more for extra xx protection something something). However they showed me owing the govn't $18.
CreditKarma My first time using CreditKarma (CK). I signed up for their freebie service and "new" tax service. I wasn't expecting much, however it looks like they have sunk a good deal of effort into the user experience (woo capital investment). The forms were simple (I work in a technical field but I still hate complexity) and intuitive. The experience took me about 30 minutes or so (all the extra stuff I didn't need to input with TT). When I first joined CreditKarma in early January I did experience some "gentle" upsell pressure. However, I didn't experience any upsell pressure during the tax return process itself. Furthermore, the tax return result was wildly different, showing that the govn't owed me $379.
Differences and Thoughts I'm pretty sure the dollar difference between the two had to do with how IRA contributions were calculated. TT wanted me to "continue to mint.com to see how much they could save me with IRA return", while CK simply asked me how much I had contributed to IRAs in 2016. I never did end up telling TT how much I had contributed to my IRA, since I didn't have an "easy" option to do so, while CK simply didn't try to upsell me in this area, and just told me, "OK how much did you contribute to IRAs?". I'm sorry TT, but I'm too lazy to do that mint.com stuff you wanted me to do. Furthermore, the CK interface was less cluttered and simpler. Also, I had always experienced TT charging me an extra $10-15 for the feds to deposit any surplus in my bank account. With CK, there was no additional fee (and no f****** upsell pressure).
Anyhoo, I'll be comparing the same thing next year. However, my preference will be CK (as compared to TT previously).
Submitted January 28, 2017 at 10:28AM by Strider3000 http://ift.tt/2jpToJ9
