Privacy Guides

One way to find providers is to go to your states tax site and see who supports your state. This list is often a lot shorter list. The ones I would look at in general sorted by decreasing popularity of their web site last year:

• TurboTax. 52%.
• H&R Block. 31%.
• FreeTaxUSA. 8%.
• TaxAct. 5%.
• TaxSlayer. 2.4%.
• OLT.com. 0.58%.
• 1040.com. 0.26%.

The % numbers are really just relative website popularity of the options I listed at a point in time. As I said before, I favor FreeTaxUSA. Interesting they can import from TurboTax, H&R Block, TaxAct, TaxSlayer, CashApp, and OLT so they must consider those their major competitors. Also note that I believe the same company that is behind FreeTaxUSA also markets under TaxHawk and Express1040.com.

TurboTax, H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer tend to be the high end products in decreasing popularity and price. The first three tend to be somewhat similar pricing, and TaxSlayer a bit cheaper. FreeTaxUSA, OLT, and 1040.com tend to be the lower end offerings again in order of decreasing web site popularity though not always decreasing price. FreeTaxUSA appears to be the low end market leader.

I have not used all of these but I have used FreeTaxUSA and TaxAct. Both were fine. We finally ditched TaxAct a few years ago due to rising prices and their stupid tiered pricing plans. FreeTaxUSA is just so much simpler then many of the other providers because it comes without most the marketing BS and it has a good price/value ratio.

Others, feel free to comment and make any corrections to what I have said.

I use and recommend Free File Fillable Forms. https://www.freefilefillableforms.com It's basically filling out an electronic version of the paper forms, but some fields are auto-calculated.

Like others said FreeTaxUSA. We use it and like it.

Just know one downside is that it does not do direct imports from financial firms or other data sources. You have to enter the data. Otherwise for individual taxes, it is pretty complete. It also does not do Form 1041 returns which is for Trusts and Estates as separate entities, that is under their own EINs. Most people do not need that.

Edit: Looks like this year a few imports have been added. One seems to be W-2 from PDF. The other is last year returns from some common other tax return providers. Not tried any of these. They already imported their own last year data.

Fuck turbo tax, that shit sucks don't use it - can't say enough bad things about it. I've used cash app to file for free for a few years now. I doubt their privacy policy is any good, but it works well and I'm not trying to fuck around with my taxes...

I can't vouch for freetaxusa.com enough. Please, if at all possible, don't use the big tax software. They are almost 100% responsible for the U.S. not having an easy tax system like other countries.

Do you know if your going to be filling out a 1040EZ or the full blown 1040? Do you own a business or are you an employee? If you make below "x" amount of money whatever irs.gov recommends because there's a law that it has to be free and accurate for certain income levels and it's the easiest way to do it if you qualify. If need more than that then you can start using that Google fu you have been training so hard at all your life.

I can also vouch for FreeTaxUSA, I've compared it against a few major tax companies and at least for relatively simple stuff, they were totally identical results, and just as easy to use.

There are a few options for free filing based on income (generally, lower that $79k) here: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free

And if you're in one of 12 lucky states, there's an IRS Direct File trial program:

Arizona
California
Florida
Massachusetts
Nevada
New Hampshire
New York
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Washington state
Wyoming

I've used H&R Block Taxcut for 20 years and it works great. You can also probably get it on the cheap, just do a search for it on slickdeals.net.

If your taxes are simple enough, you should do it yourself.

I only started paying other people to do it as my life got more complicated, marriage, kid, house, stock options, solar panels, etc. etc.

Jackson Hewlitt is terrible, will never use them again.

H&R Block is kind of the industry standard, but that also makes them a target:

https://www.koin.com/news/tax-payer-information-compromised-in-hr-block-break-in/

https://sileo.com/hr-block-identity-theft/

https://kesq.com/news/crime/2020/04/30/several-tax-files-stolen-from-hr-block-in-cathedral-city/

Your best bet would be to hire an independent tax accountant.