Against their own customers?
More detail is required here. Free Fillable Forms is available for everyone. If your AGI is below $57,000, you can use Free File, in which commercial tax prep software will e-file for free. There are, I think, 16 companies in the program, though some of them have heavier restrictions on who can use the service.
That’s what I said. If you want to do free file, which is free, and they do all the math for you and make suggestions, then you need to be under $57k. Many other people aren’t willing to download all the pdfs and do it all themselves otherwise, although I suspect the doper faction is better equipped than most people.
Here is the IRS list of Free File companies. Yeah some weird requirements in there (no MN or NH? Why? Arbitrary ages?) And some, like Free1040TaxReturn, seem to want to force you to pay for state.
Now I “have a guy” that does my taxes, but before that I used to use taxslayer. I don’t know if they still do it, but a few years ago it’d be free if you were active duty.
Another vote for Turbo Tax.
I’ve been using TurboTax for years, and I think they are pretty good. (Obviously, or I wouldn’t keep using them.)
However, in my early days as a employee, when I just had summer jobs in high school, my dad made me fill out my tax forms by hand, to make sure I knew the basics of figuring out income tax. So I still go over the final forms produced by TT line by line. I don’t check the calculations – I assume TT does the math right. I just check that everything I expect to be included is there, and there’s nothing that looks fishy.
Ultra Tax.
Disclaimer: My wife works for them.
It’s mostly a matter of UI. At the end of the form, the numbers will be the same no matter which software you use; the question is how easy it is to insert them into the program.
Because you don’t have to worry about state taxes, you should be able to get a better deal than you would if you lived in a different state. And luckily for procrastinators with fairly standard tax returns, a couple of the companies give really steep discounts if you’re willing to wait until April 11th or so to start your tax return.
I’ve been happy with Turbo Tax, finding it easy to use and not too costly.
I just started this year’s returns, and Turbo Tax thoroughly fucked up my state returns. Basically I worked in state A while living in state B, and later moved to state B. Shouldn’t be that hard, right? That money is supposed to be double taxed, but Turbo Tax would never let me put state B income (earned while a resident of state A) on my state A return.
So, I throw myself at the mercy at the online tech support people. The first few attempts I dealt with competent people but frustratingly they couldn’t help me. But the last attempt ended when the tech support agent (someone who’s qualified to help you navigate the site and enter information) decided the problem was with my understanding of state tax codes. She said some mindbogglingly stupid things, and when I started to argue she threatened me with an IRS audit. For my state taxes :rolleyes:.
Fuck turbotax.
Next, I tried H&R Block, which also was completely confused by my state tax situation, and tried to double tax income sources that should definitely be taxed in just one state. Tax Act, finally, let me properly allocate my income. And they gave much clearer guidance on how to handle different sources of taxable scholarship income.
But, for the federal return, each of the services I tried worked well enough.