Gone a quarter century without ever paying for tax preparation, but it's getting tougher. This year we're self-employed, I have an IRA contribution, Marketplace health insurance...so TaxAct (~$80) is out. Based on online reviews and Reddit posts, this is what I've narrowed it down to, in order of least likely to most likely to use:
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Credit Karma. Pros: free federal and state for everyone, now and forever. Cons: so new and I'm reading many reported bugs, some which seem scary (like not getting the return actually accepted). Also, need to sign up for their credit monitoring service, which is an unknown for me.
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Online Taxes / OLT.com. Pros: free federal and state for our income. Cons: Reviews suggest its topic help is limited. One review said "stay away!". Really don't know enough about it yet.
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FreeTaxUSA. Pros: Free federal, about $10 for state (I can do state for free through NJ's site, but damn I'd love to just do it once and auto-populate), seems to have solid reviews and at least 5-7 years track record. Can auto-fill 1040 based on pdf from last year. Cons: $10 (even I'm not that cheap, though if olt.com is fine, hey, why break my streak?).
I'm going to also have to do this complex thing called an "iterative calculation" for my Self Employed Health Insurance deduction, and wondering if any/all of these will do that right or let me put in my own computed number instead of their auto-computing it (since even H&R Block's and TurboTax's software gets this one wrong).
I'm leaning toward FreeTaxUSA. Thoughts?
April 01, 2017 at 02:07PM
