RL grown-up question: taxes online?

[tzikeh]

Has anyone ever prepared their tax return through one of the free online services? Are they truly free? Were you pleased with the outcome? Did you trust it? Can you do local as well as federal?

Anyone care for a mint?

Comments

[debchan.livejournal.com]

I looked at a couple and saw that while they were free, e-filing wasn't (charges for this service varied from $14-$25). I ended up doing what I do every year; downloading TaxCut and getting the rebate for e-filing and the state package. It works out to about $20 total spent, and considering that I use it for my kid's taxes as well, it's cheap.

[gchick.livejournal.com]

I've done it for the last two years, with two different services (after the first one changed their eligibility rules for the free service). In both cases, the preparation and federal e-filing was free, but the state filing cost somewhere on the order of 10 or 15 bucks. Either way, it was faster and cheaper than buying the latest Turbo-tax, and a hell of a lot less headache than dealing with paper forms.

I didn't have any trust worries, and refunds came with no problems. Next year, I may not qualify for the freebie (new job w/ more complications), and I'll have to think then about whether it's worth a bit more, but I suspect it still will be.

And I will take a mint; thank you.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Have a mint.

Do you remember the urls of the services you used?

[gchick.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, minty!

The first year was Intuit/Turbo-Tax online; the second was HR Block. I don't have the specific URLs anymore, but they both have online preparation services prominently featured. You just go through their usual tax prep application, and if you meet the income cutoff, the service is free.

I poked around a bit at some of the smaller services, and decided that not only did I trust them less, their online apps seemed much less easy-to-use, and some of them didn't offer state filing.

IIRC, there's also a form at irs.gov where you can find the services where you're eligible for free filing based on your income.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

I file every year with Turbo tax and I have no complaints, both state and federal, although there is a feww for the filing. www.turbotax.com I believe.

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

I have done so; yes, it was truly free, I did local and federal, and it was a breeze. All good things!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

URL?

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

If you go to the IRS web site, there's a link to the free filing services, and you can take a little quiz (just like LJ!) to determine if you qualify for free. I don't remember which one I picked, but it WAS free, and we got our refund in about 3 weeks. They did want $10 to file state, but I already had the info so I just went to our state web page and found the link to file free there. That refund came in about 3 1/2 weeks. Easy squeazy!

[ano-mea.livejournal.com]

Anyone care for a mint?

Is it wafer-thin?
(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

I went through H&R Block online (http://www.hrblock.com/taxes/index.html), which I found through the IRS website. Federal taxes were completely free to do and file; state (at least for Virginia, it might be different depending on the state) was $19.95.

It was easy to use and relatively painless, although I did end up paying federal taxes for the first time ever since I have nothing worthwhile to deduct.