Thanks for the replies, everyone. My wife had a medical procedure yesterday and today is recovery day so I’ll sift through the responses later tonight or tomorrow when I have some downtime and try address individual posts. My plan is to try out the various sites/software you’ve all suggested and see what fits my student’s needs.
One thing to note: my students live on a rather seculded residential campus and the opportunities for leaving the campus are few and far between; going to a tax preparer as some posters have suggested is a non-starter – It simply isn’t an option for them. Also (ok, so two things to note . It’s been a long three days), paying even $10 to file a state return is something many of my students cannot afford. That’s why I was hoping for a program that would let them print out their completed return and send it in via snail mail – it avoids the ridiculous fees that these kids cannot afford.
I switched to them once CreditKarma was bought by Intuit. Cash App Taxes was very easy to use for regular employee wages (haven’t tried their self-employment support though).
(Edit: Actually, CreditKarma was sold to Intuit, but its tax software was instead divested and sold to Square, which bought Cash App, which then rebranded it to… Cash App Taxes! So I guess it’s just the successor to Credit Karma Tax, which was also free and easy to use back in the day.)
Late to the party but another vote for Cash App. Using it for a few years now. And yeah, I used to use Credit Karma but as was mentioned above, it somehow morphed into Cash App Taxes. Anyway, it works for me.
I had a student use Cash App to file his (very basic, W2 income only) Federal and Oregon state taxes. The process was easy and streamlined although the student chose to use their phone which I thought was a bit clunky but maybe I’m just old. The student chose to have their refund deposited into their bank through Cash App, which meant they did not need to enter the usual bank account and routing number.
Cash App did not charge to do any of this. Additionally, this student was able to print out hard copies of their 1040 and OR-40 that were fileable should he have chosen that option.
Another student chose to use freetaxusa . com for their similarly basic W2 income only taxes and it was also quite easy although she had to pay $14.99 for the state return. She did not have a cash app account so chose to use the freetaxusa website. This meant she had to add her banking info as she did not want her refund sent as a paper check.
The freetaxusa website did not let her print fileable copies of her 1040 or the OR-40. The PDF copies she was able to print had watermarks across each page. Fine for recordkeeping, useless for actually filing a paper 1040 with the IRS.
My students with the 1099 NEC income have not been back in class yet so I have yet to assess how well the various programs work with those.
My suggestion for FreeTaxUSA wasn’t to print and send the state return (which we both noted isn’t possible with the watermark), rather to print and then use it as a guide for filling out either a paper version or filing via the Oregon state e-file portal.
They’re all used to mobile apps. But having to work with complex PDFs, or worse, government websites? Paper mail?! You might as well be asking them to fax something…
The governments (federal and state) are often at a big disadvantage here when it comes to taxpayer-friendly filing options. They don’t pay as well as the private sector, so they can’t hire very good software designers and developers. They’re further hamstrung by various regulations, lobbyists, layoffs, etc. It’s a miracle they have any sort of workable online self-file system at all. But the private tax filing companies have a lot more resources they can spend on making the experience easier.
In some cases, the companies can directly recoup that cost by selling their software (like Intuit & others). I’m not sure how Cash App Taxes makes any money since it’s totally free. Maybe they sell your info. Maybe it’s just cheap advertising for the main Cash App. In any case, I think many younger people would happily give up some privacy (they don’t really have much to begin with) in exchange for a free, easy experience, rather than dealing with the traditionally convoluted self-file processes with forms and paperwork and such. It also reduces the chance of errors because the software can catch a lot of mistakes (not all, but more than a paper form).
For what it’s worth, I used CreditKarma and then Cash App Taxes for the last decade and it was painless every time and got my returns accepted and the refunds in my account shortly thereafter. It’s much much easier to use than the official government websites.
Cash App worked like a charm for my two kids. Appreciate the recommendation.
TurboTax claimed to have a free simple non-State service. Only after filling everything out was the “free” option not available. Fuck 'em. Need the CFPB on their ass.
Note: that’s the Direct File program, which is relatively new and still in piloting, it’s only available in half of the states. They don’t mention the Free File program, which is available to anyone under $84k income, or Free Fillable Forms.
. It’s been a long three days), paying even $10 to file a state return is something many of my students cannot afford. That’s why I was hoping for a program that would let them print out their completed return and send it in via snail mail – it avoids the ridiculous fees that these kids cannot afford.
