2nd Level LPT: federal IRS and state IRS are different entities and you file each one separately, meaning, you don't have to use the same site to do them. You can file wichever at different times, separately for federal and state taxes.

Hey I’m on business in CO this week and let me just say this state is amazing! Everyone is super friendly and Denver is quite An amazing city

Super pumped over here in CO with like 6 W2s and student debt!

Your first year in Colorado you can’t file online because you aren’t in the state’s system yet. That was the case when I moved here 4 years ago. I had to fill it out and mail it in, but done it online every year since!

Here

This greatly depends on your personal situation. I’m also confused as to how the new IRS Income Limits will apply, so keep that in mind when researching a method.

In my situation (extremely simple taxes), there was no need to even start with Turbo Tax. The CO website is VERY easy to use. I’ve done FreeTax + State the last two years with 0 hiccups.

If you have a ton of deductions or corner cases, I’d use OPs method. Otherwise, go straight for ol’ easy.

Not a joke cause the same happens to me most years.

40 for state and 40 for federal now. And apparently those are the “discounted early file” prices too

Your dad doesn't thank you.

Some scholarship/grant money actually is nontaxable. Too much of tax time during my grad school was spent fighting with online tax software to get it to understand that, because it treated it as taxable, depending on the number in the tuition box.

It used to be that because of the nontaxable grant, you weren't able to save in a roth but I think I read that they fixed that this year.

I had a similar situation before - and I did the exact same thing, I corrected TT. TT ended up being correct though. About 2 years later I received a reassessment from IRS and has to pay back the credit. The credit only applies to the first four years of post secondary education, and you cannot use it for years beyond.

I'm pretty certain that in the US if a company is going to have a binding arbitration clause, they have to provide a means of opting out. It may not be easy/convenient/well documented, but it is required.

I've never heard of such a thing and know of no reason it even might be required. You're gonna have to cite something for that.

That being said, if you're the only one (or one of the only ones opting out) it is unlikely there will be a class action lawsuit because there won't be a large enough group of people that also opted out and are impacted.

Yes, I definitely think that's a drawback, and I'm uncomfortable even accepting a mandatory arbitration clause that I opt out of for that reason. That said, that discomfort hasn't yet reached the same level of refusal, and most disputes aren't classes, so for the time being I'm a lot more easily convinced to go along with one.

Yea. I believe you are correct.

Federal is free though

So maybe 12.95StateTaxUsa :P

I don't mind paying $12.00 for my $350.00 return every year. Not a big deal.

It's free up to a certain income level. I've used it the last 3 years and never had to pay to file.

Except for states like Florida where we don't have to file state tax.

Yes, but the last time I had income from 2 different states, they couldn’t handle that. I haven’t filed taxes yet this year, but hoping they’ve upgraded to account for that situation.

I'm well aware that the actual state software needs to be developed as well, and products like TurboTax build that into the cost of their product. They claim to "give" you one state for free, but they're just adding the cost of the state onto the federal product, thus covering their costs.

Now let's get to e-filing, which was my original point. They charge you $19.99 to e-file a state return, but that state return gets sent with your federal return when you e-file. It's one transaction, one communications session. The feds forward your e-file to the states, who then send the acknowledgment back to the feds. So Intuit is doing no extra work to "send" your e-file, which is why charging for it is a ripoff to the customer.

I was just trying to make people aware of it.

13 lbs of your mommas sweet peach cobbler /s

If there are I haven't found them yet.

My wife and I filed jointly with it last year and our combined income cleared 6 figures.

No, gotta type it in manually.

Honestly it is pretty easy. U copy every line from your w-2's (and other forms of income) and the website will take you step by step through the tax form, asking you questions to ensure you claim all income, as well as get every deduction possible. These programs are very user friendly and help you every step of the way. They even have chat support if you have questions (my wife did chat support for turbo tax last year). Give it a try, maybe even enter last years info as a test to see if you come up with the same result as your CA. Obviously some tax situations can get very complicated and I have no experience with that, but I definitely recommend trying it yourself!

I might too but it does annoy me that they're taking my money for something I could get for mostly free. It's bothered me for years but the convenience is nice too. I'm torn.

I know it's easy to be paranoid with things like this but what everyone is saying is true. The site is really easy to use and navigate. It might take a tad longer because you'll be new to it but next year it will save all of your info just like turbo tax. Also it's so much better because you're not constantly being nagged about upgrading and paying more to have your return reviewed like turbo tax does. Also, no spammy emails. I was mad it took me so long to find out about it.

Save the $40, for real. I did freetaxusa for the first time instead of TurboTax for 2018, after reading a similar reddit thread last year. As far as I can remember, it was just as simple/convenient and even the ui was equally good. (I miiight have had to type in a few boxes from my w2? So, like, maybe 30 seconds of “effort”?) Now I’m just mad I used TurboTax for so long.

they do but this one is legit.

Read the comments. Freetaxusa saves your information year to year as well

I checked out freetaxusa because of all the comments on reddit and it is legit and just as easy as turbo tax. I used TurboTax for like the past ten years and just downloaded last years return and uploaded it to freetaxusa and it was just as easy to use as TurboTax and didn’t cost me $60 either. They charge like $12 for the state return and that’s it.

There’s absolutely no reason to use TurboTax tbh.

Sure, but you're the one who linked straight to TurboTax ;-)

Overall, the IRS says about 70% of people are eligible for one of the free file options (other than Free Fillable Forms, which would be very nearly everyone). It's a good program that more people should know about probably.

Or do you think "You forgot a 0 here." is a service worth paying for?

Not the person you're replying to but if I lost a 0 somewhere it's probably because I was doing something wrong and would never know it happened so, I mean, yeah I'd totally pay for a second set of eyes on it. And honestly, preferably robot eyes. The problem isn't a company charging for a service, it's the industry's lobbying efforts to keep taxes complicated in the first place

I live in New Zealand every year the government automatically sorts out my taxes and deposits any refund or benefit money into my bank account, also the tax law is really simplified compared to USA. its so easy, took me an hour 3 years ago and i am sorted untill i do something weird with my finance.

Help me out here, what are state taxes? I did taxes for the first time last year and used turbo tax. Did it automatically do them for or is this something separate? I always thought we just did the federal taxes... now I’m worried

Honestly for the price of $12 that's well worth it. Especially if the other forms are free to file when everyone else wanted money. I know it's all really free anyways but to be able to pull it up at work and knock it out it's well worth it imo

True.

Also, no one has ever exaggerated about anything, ever.

So have I, just did it a week ago actually.

Exactly. And do we really trust the govt that much? Nope lol

Compared to turbo tax online or a real accountant? Freetaxusa for business is essentially identical to turbo tax online. I'm the experience from an actual accountant would be significantly better than either.

Turbo tax got in trouble for tricking people into paying when they didn’t need to, which I believe is where a lot of this misunderstanding comes from.

Even if you managed to do this in the past 1. It doesn't work now. 2. People are saying they give you like 2-4 numbers some of which you can get yourself without TurboTax sooo

I have Nelnet. This is specifically for income-based repayment plan recertification, which had to be done at the aforementioned site. Nelnet has similar issues though, but I was able to get them to bypass the phone number thing by calling them.

Because they were paid not to.

I think the IRS could do much better than they do here (to be clear, I'm not blaming them here, this is on Congress), but to go all the way to sending you a bill I think/have been convinced is a bad idea -- there is too much the IRS does not or might not know.

See this thread for a debate between myself and another Redditor (I still need to reply to that last response to me...) where I think actually we were on way more of the same page than it started out seeming like :-). I was arguing that the IRS should prepare candidate returns for people; you'd log into a site, verify that all your information is correct if it is and correct it if not (perhaps in more extreme cases, falling back to preparing a return via entirely separate means), submit, and if you're getting a refund then wait for your check.

Indigorain48 made some convincing-to-me arguments that showing the final outcome (your eventual refund) has significant drawbacks given the complexities of the US tax code and other aspects of the tax-filing process is a bad idea; you can see those there.

But from my perspective, the parts we disagree with are actually to me the least important aspects of it. A system that I think would make both of us happy is what I described above -- you don't get your bill (or even see a candidate refund/balance due) until you've verified all the relevant information is correct.

As for why that hasn't happened -- that's a combination of (i) the tax prep industry lobbying against it, (ii) the Grover Norquist contingent of Republicans who think that smoothing the tax filing process will reduce people's awareness of how much they are paying in taxes and thus make it easier to raise taxes in the future, and (iii) mostly Republicans who have been cutting the IRS's budget in a "cut off the US's nose to spite its face" kind of move (many of those cuts were actually budget-negative because it cut auditing that brought in more revenue than the outlays).

The government may not know about all of my revenue streams to send an exact bill. There are also many ways to lower your taxes with write offs and credits.

Because the IRS doesn't know what your deductions might be. Do you have enough to itemize? Do you have any tax credits? Did you tithe or give charitable contributions?

etc etc

That's right! The government takes your money, keeps an account of how much you owe them, then doesn't tell you.... Then makes you figure out how much you owe them, and then when you pay them the wrong amount, they charge you more.

They would need access to all of your information which people do not want to hand over.

People would not report changes in their life if it benefited them.

It is a massively underfunded department as well.

A huge number of people fill out blatantly fraudulent returns and get away with it. Some don’t file at all.

Planet money did an episode on this. There's basically two groups (successfully) stopping it.

1. As mentioned above, the tax preparer/CPA lobby put a lot pressure on to stop it.

2. A conservative group went against it because, hypothetically, it could cause Americans to pay more in taxes than they needed to. The government would certainly be aware of most (or, in many cases, all) of your income, but may not be as aware of your expenses, which might raise your tax bill.

I'm with you though. They should just send you a bill.

Because they love people to auto pay on their paychecks, and over pay, so you get a happy happy refund.

If they just sent a bill to everybody every year it would be like property tax, and go to your county on the day that people have to pay that, you will meet people that hate taxs.

If you’re smart, you’d still go over that bill and make sure everything is correct, and unless the tax code gets simpler, you’ll probably end up paying a CPA to review everything. So basically the same process we have now, just reversed.

Oh, they will. Eventually...

Because if you fuckup filing your taxes they can fine you for more money

Half the country is convinced the IRS is a Deep State Conspiracy and if they sent you a bill they'd just deliberately overcharge you so they'd have more money to do evil movie villain stuff.

Because America is so fucking awesome!!!

Seriously, that’s the answer that a shit ton of Americans will give you for so much of the dumb shit we do here, like our entire shitty health care system.

r/MURICA

Well for one, the irs doesn’t know all of your financial details which factor in to things like deductions, so you’d just lose those benefits.

In addition to being paid not to, especially before with the more complicated tax codes but even more so now, there are so many credits/discounts that are applied on a case by case basis as well as people working multiple jobs, having investments/other accounts earning interest, and many other unknowns which make it is feasible to expect them to do it for you. The only way that would work is if they simplified the tax codes even further.

Ohh poor child!

May you one day understand how taxes work.

Because then people would be literally rioting in the streets about how much they pay in taxes. Can you even imagine the shitshow the media would make of it when a single mother who makes minimum wage has to write a check to the government for several thousand dollars rather than having it deducted from her paycheck without ever seeing a penny of it?

Income tax was supposed to be temporary to pay for ww1 and again ww2. I have a theory that they don't just send you a bill because it's a loophole; if you voluntarily calculate and submit, they didn't ask you for it.

Because they don’t know your specific financial situation. Yea they might be able to send a bill for a simple return but how are they going to know if yours is or isn’t.

The IRS would have no way of knowing your write offs or other business engagements that aren’t directly tracked by the IRS. They wouldn’t know that your filing status, how you’re dealing with dependencies,etc. There is a LOT that they don’t know that would require you to ask you a bunch of questions, which are in essence what tax forms are.

For the average Joe with just a W-2 and a couple 1099s... sure, but for businesses and people with a multitude of complicated investments this would be ridiculously difficult for the government to do.

Why do I have to tell those fuckers what they already know, anyway? They shouldn't be trying to put us in an entrapment situation where we tell them what we know and they check it against what they already know; it should be like most of Europe, where they do all the god damn work and ask us to verify that they got it right. You fuck something up by accident on your taxes, you get fucked!

In the U.K. my employer did my taxes for me. Bake your noodle on that!

Did you...did you not read the comments you're replying to?

Agree. They have ALL THE DATA. Why can't they just do it? Then again, they are the government. Wouldn't make sense if they were helpful and efficient.

because the government doesn’t know everything about your life, specifically shit that is tax deductible.

Ive been working in singapore for a few years and its a night and day difference. They do all the tax forms for you and basically send me a text telling me its ready. I can then pay my tax online or at an atm. Unfortunately i still have to file my US taxes and its a major pain.

Because they don't know what deductions you have.

If you are using the standard deduction, the 1040ez is trivial.

Well if they did then you'd get all the deductions you are entitled to instead they keep all the overpayment and go after people that shortchange them. It's a racket.

Because a lot of people would blow all the money they got from higher paychecks instead of saving it for the tax man

You wanna know what’s funny?

They know what you owe, they know just about wverything you do with your money in this brave new digital world..

Yet they’re...

A. Trying to squeeze possibly every dollar out of you they might’ve missed

B. They’re being dicks & idk want to jail you or seize your property bc that’s pretty profitable lol

because a whole lot of income and deductions aren't on the books.

They just told you: it’s because they were paid by the tax company lobbies not to.

They don't have enough information to just send you a bill. They don't know I donated something to Goodwill, added a desk to my home office, lost $200 gambling, took an Mandarin class at the community college, etc.

They already took your money. You filing is you trying to get some back.

It's funny because that's kind of how it works but with more bureaucracy.

You send in the tax forms but they already know what to expect. If there is a mistake, you get a letter back telling you what you did wrong with either a bill or a check depending on your mistake. You then take their letter, make whatever adjustments they say, and/or add your own adjusting and send it back.

I like that idea!

The problem is, some 1099s and w2s are don't by hand.. Small companies mostly...

So the IRS doesn't have all the info until later. It takes 3 to 6 weeks for them to manually enter your 1040,i wpuld expect its similar for the 1099s and w2s...

Government created software works about as well as every other software. Most of it is outsourced to the same private companies like IBM or Xerox. They, in turn, outsource it to some third party contractor.

It works really well in every other country, the DMV/BMV websites for the states I've lived in work just as well as the private utility websites I've used.

Actually, do you have a link to any seriously terrible .gov websites?

Most software is garbage

Modern US federal govt websites tend to actually be pretty great.

https://18f.gsa.gov/

We're on Obamacare and despite the well publicized troubles they had on rollout back in 2014(ish) it's been really solid now for years, no complaints.

Generally, yes. Hence how we function as a society with 350 million people.

A reasonable point!

It's absolutely possible we could come up with a serviceable solution.

You realize that's how it already works right????????

I have a feeling that if you made a list of everything you perceive as wrong with the world, that I'd disagree with most of it.

Yeah, probably not soon, and not definitely ever.

As an American in Australia that's required to do both, there's no comparison. My Australian taxes are done in about 5 minutes. My American taxes take me the better part of a day. I don't even have income in the U.S., or properties, or investments, nothing. They just want their slice of what I make in Australia.

It’s truly as bad as it sounds.

And it’s even worse because the IRS knows almost everything. So if you make a mistake, they’ll catch and fine you (unless you’re rich, then you can do whatever you want).

I mean for all the hate American taxes get for how it's done. I don't think I ever ever spent more the. 15 minutes filing my taxes a year. And I only had to pay once to file. Due to needing to file a 1099 which is to show money you were given by not an employer but another business when I had some side work going on.

Taxes are actually really simple but they could still be simpler.

Am Aussie doing US taxes. It suuuuuuuucks.

We’re fucked anyway for a lot of other reasons too. But hey freedom?..

America is trash

thank you :)

Millions could mean 2 million.

When you have 200 million paying taxes, it's not that much.

Exactly! I file my federal for free with turbo tax every year. But throughout the whole process the huge, red button is for deluxe while the “free version” is a translucent grey hypertext in the corner. It’s deceiving. The do charge for state filings though.

I messed up using software-- didn't enter name/SSN of my kid on a daycare credit form, and filled out a 1040X. The IRS was completely chill-- they had me write a single paragraph essay of what I did wrong, and just include my fixed main-1040 form and only the other forms that got corrected. Got my money in decent time.

We had a very different experience with the IRS. My husband got an inheritance from his grandma about $20k When he filed he found info saying he didn’t need to pay tax on inheritance. Well apparently the way the inheritance was paid out from her account somehow made that invalid and the IRS sent us a nasty letter demanding we pay the tax on it. We tried to fight it but realized it was more trouble than we were willing to deal with so we paid up.

He invested the money in a low risk bond for about two years. It didn’t increase much but we paid the tax on what we were supposed to. Then pulled it out to make a down payment on a house. Two years later the IRS sends us another nasty letter claiming that the amount we pulled out of the bond was new income and we needed to pay the tax on it. Umm no. So we sent a bunch of paperwork proving that it was the same inheritance we had already paid tax on.

A few months go by and we get another letter saying “you still haven’t paid us. We are going to garnish your wages if you don’t pay now!” We send copies of everything again. More months go by with no reply.

Then we get another letter that completely ignores the previous correspondence and says we owe them for some education deduction we took years ago that supposedly we had taken too many times. It was only allowed twice. We each had taken it twice because we both were in college at the time. So they saw four deductions and dinged us. We sent another letter back showing we were both in school and each took it twice. They sent us a repeat of the previous letter with no explanation just threatening garnishment again.

So to get out from under this crap we decide to set up a payment plan and just pay it back.

Next tax season we use our return to pay off the rest of the balance... or so we thought. We paid the amount on the statement.

We get a letter saying it’s all paid off.

Then we get another letter angry that we missed payments and saying we still had a balance (after getting no more monthly statements.)

We were calling and demanding to know what was going on and the rep was confused as hell too.

We pay the remaining like $60 or whatever thinking it’s finally over.

Then the state sends us a mean letter basically shaming us “Hey we noticed you paid all this money to the IRS. You naughty tax-evaders! Give us some too!” And they wanted the tax on the bond payout that we didn’t owe in the first place.

Another year and a half of sending paperwork and weirdness.

We finally come to the conclusion we owe them about $80 so we pay. Then get a letter after doing our taxes again saying we didn’t pay and they are taking it out of our return. I send them the damn receipt. Nothing. I sent it again. Nothing.

Now it’s tax time again. I winder what joys await us this year.

Fuck doing taxes. I would gladly pay someone else to deal with this bullshit. I shouldn’t have to though.

Absolutely! My roommate accidentally overpaid by like $4.00 (that's 4, not a typo) and they sent him a goddamn check in the mail. But if you underpay, they're just as kind about getting you set up to pay.

That wasn't my experience. I had several jobs one year and I forgot about one that I never received a W2 or 1099 for. I earned less than 5k for that employer and it was a huge Hassel dealing with the IRS and I ended up paying a whole lot more than my normal tax rate after interest and penalties. It sucked.

Absolutely true.

But genius marketing has made the IRS out to be this magnificent beast of an evil organization that will do anything it can to ruin your world because you forgot to dot an 'i' or cross a 't'.

So I've got this stress-free, easy-to-use, completely-not-scammy tax software for you to check out...

Oh, yeah, there's tons of examples like these.

Capitalism is bad. We're starting to learn this. I'm not saying go full socialist/communist, but we need to make some alterations to our current state of government and civilization. It's unsustainable misery for anyone that isn't lucky enough to be 'upper class'.

Dont forget about planned obsolescence and shrinkflation to go along with that inflation!

Alright uncle Bubba, calm down and eat your Thanksgiving dinner before it gets cold.

And in a lot of countries, that is the government's job and it is a free service. It wouldn't be a privately owned corporation taking payments for it.

You used to be able to get them at the post office too. A few years ago the library didn't have all of them and referred me to the post office. They informed me they no longer carry any of the forms.

The Free File Fillable Forms is definitely the first place everyone (within the income limit) should go when filing. They’re guided just enough to make it easily doable for most people, and the act of actually reading over all the forms as you fill them in will help you to be more fluent when filing the next year.

Edit: not everyone

You really just have to lay down on the skip-forward button for about 15 minutes with the dollop. Once you hear Dave yell AUGUST 14TH NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT THE YEAR OF OUR LORD you can sit back and relax.

I'll have to give The Dollop a try, I've seen it recommended a fair amount.

I am obsessed with this episode! I love that kind of telemarketer related stuff.