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This year we tried doing our taxes using both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA. TurboTax has a much worse interface, it took almost twice as long to complete the taxes

This year we tried doing our taxes using both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA. TurboTax has a much worse interface, it took almost twice as long to complete the taxes despite having an identical return. TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us somehow despite having entered the same information into both sites, but that amount is less than the fee TurboTax would charge so we ended up submitting through FreeTaxUSA instead. Next year I don't think I'm even going to bother with TurboTax.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago
I got totally screwed last year job wise. 2 of my employers have not reported my tax contributions to the state. I never received a W2 from one of them. TurboTax was able to find all my W2 from the HR companies, but I was unable to access those HR websites for my W2s. Because my contributions weren’t reported to the state I have to get all my W2 (luckily it was in my federal return) and resend them to the state. I hate TurboTax, but I wouldn’t have been able to file my taxes this year without them.
- missblit 5y ago
  You would have been able to but it'd be a bit painful: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc154 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc154 The basic process is to: 1. Contact your employer and have them send you a W2 2. If your employer does not send you your W2 by the end of February, contact the IRS and they'll send you a Form 4852 3. If you still haven't received a W2 in time to file taxes, then you can file using the Form 4852 instead 4. If you receive the W2 after filing and the actual numbers differ from your estimates, then you have to file an amended return.
  - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
    I’m not doing that under any circumstances. I’d rather get audited
    - mistersquid 5y ago
      > I’m not doing that under any circumstances. I’d rather get audited I’ve run into issues with the IRS over incorrect filings. I am not a tax attorney or an accounting professional, but I strongly advise you to rethink your position. Under no circumstances do you want to get audited by the IRS instead of complying with the Federal Tax Code. Once the IRS begins its investigation, you will be obligated to pay the costs of complying with their requests, which costs may very well dwarf the costs of complying in the first place.
      - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
        I don’t have any money. I literally lost everything I have accrued in my life in the last 18 months. That fact that I’m not at bankruptcy door is because of what little stimulus we got. So no, I’m too exhausted to deal with the IRS. If they care, they can serve me and drag me to court because I won’t comply at all.
WorldMaker 5y ago
It may be apocrypha, but supposedly Intuit years ago realized that people don't think the system "worked hard enough" if results returned immediately. (These kind of calculations are what computers do well and generally return immediately.) Supposedly Intuit has been A/B testing for decades how many artificial delays to give people the impression that the system is "working harder" for them. They intentionally want their interface to be worse and "slower" because of the idiot dark pattern that our dumb monkey brains think that "serious things" like taxes need lots of "calculation time".
- jandrese 5y ago
  It wasn't even the stupid "spinning numbers" thing that slowed us down. Mostly it was being locked into wizards asking us one question at a time. Dialog: Do you have foreign bank accounts? Y/N Next dialog: Do you have foreign investments? Y/N Next dialog: ... For every single damn thing. FreeTaxUSA put them all in a list so we just clicked on the applicable ones. It was much more efficient. And if you have to go back and double check/change something TurboTax makes you go through the whole damn wizard again. TurboTax is supposedly able to import my W2 automatically (I work for a large corporation that use a large professional third party company to do W2s), but this has never worked. I always have to enter the information by hand.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    I always go to the forms and ignore the interview. I haven't found any other software that is practical to use in this way and has all the forms I need. I tried H&R Block's free software one year, I think, because I was mad at Intuit, but it was useless because there were big gaping holes in the functionality.
    - mypalmike 5y ago
      I'm curious what the big gaping holes are. I've used H&R and its predecessor, TaxCut, to do my returns for like 20 years (minus 1 or 2 years where I hired a CPA due to complicated investments and tax credits). I find it very straightforward and fast to use.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us somehow Don’t you have to sign to say that you’re entitled to that return? How are you doing it if you don’t understand where it’s coming from?
- adrusi 5y ago
  The person paying the taxes is not always expected to understand exactly how the tax code applies to them. IANAL but I think that when you hire a human tax accountant, their saying that your return is legally sufficient for you to testify that you are entitled to your return as filed. I don't know how that would apply to tax software, but I imagine that for purposes that TurboTax is appropriate for, saying "well TurboTax, a widely used and generally respected accounting tool generated this return, so I believe that it is correct," would be sufficient. Of course if it turned out that you were not entitled to the full refund you filed for, you would still be liable to pay back the difference, but you wouldn't be assessed an additional fine. Again IANAL, this is how I expect the law would work, not necessarily how it actually works.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    IANAL as well, but you would possibly have a case for a civil lawsuit against TurboTax
notshift 5y ago
I did the same this year, but found that FreeTaxUSA's support for crypto transactions was basically non-existent. Filing through TurboTax was way less work than what I would've had to do with FreeTaxUSA.
xyzelement 5y ago
This is the sort of critical thing. You do your taxes once a year but the impact could be hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. In your case it was only 50 but thematically this says that TT is better because it found you more credits/deductions. You don't know it's gonna "only" be 50 ahead of time. And the more complexity/money is at stake, the more important it is to get right. Once you are talking about potentially real money, the quality of the UI becomes quite secondary in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, would love for the IRS to offer a standard free filing solution. But short of that, I want the thing that is most likely to get me the biggest legal return
- voakbasda 5y ago
  The quality of the UI likely reflects the quality of the overall system. If the UI is flashy trash, you really want to trust the same programmers with actual math? Source: programmer for 30 years
- jandrese 5y ago
  It could also be that TurboTax gets $50 less on the next person. I was working with only a single datapoint. Also, from what I recall the extra $50 seemed to be coming from TurboTax counting a deduction for double what FreeTaxUSA did. I really didn't understand what it was doing there.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

I got totally screwed last year job wise. 2 of my employers have not reported my tax contributions to the state. I never received a W2 from one of them. TurboTax was able to find all my W2 from the HR companies, but I was unable to access those HR websites for my W2s. Because my contributions weren’t reported to the state I have to get all my W2 (luckily it was in my federal return) and resend them to the state. I hate TurboTax, but I wouldn’t have been able to file my taxes this year without them.

missblit 5y ago
You would have been able to but it'd be a bit painful: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc154 https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc154 The basic process is to: 1. Contact your employer and have them send you a W2 2. If your employer does not send you your W2 by the end of February, contact the IRS and they'll send you a Form 4852 3. If you still haven't received a W2 in time to file taxes, then you can file using the Form 4852 instead 4. If you receive the W2 after filing and the actual numbers differ from your estimates, then you have to file an amended return.
- jbluepolarbear 5y ago
  I’m not doing that under any circumstances. I’d rather get audited
  - mistersquid 5y ago
    > I’m not doing that under any circumstances. I’d rather get audited I’ve run into issues with the IRS over incorrect filings. I am not a tax attorney or an accounting professional, but I strongly advise you to rethink your position. Under no circumstances do you want to get audited by the IRS instead of complying with the Federal Tax Code. Once the IRS begins its investigation, you will be obligated to pay the costs of complying with their requests, which costs may very well dwarf the costs of complying in the first place.
    - jbluepolarbear 5y ago
      I don’t have any money. I literally lost everything I have accrued in my life in the last 18 months. That fact that I’m not at bankruptcy door is because of what little stimulus we got. So no, I’m too exhausted to deal with the IRS. If they care, they can serve me and drag me to court because I won’t comply at all.

WorldMaker 5y ago

It may be apocrypha, but supposedly Intuit years ago realized that people don't think the system "worked hard enough" if results returned immediately. (These kind of calculations are what computers do well and generally return immediately.) Supposedly Intuit has been A/B testing for decades how many artificial delays to give people the impression that the system is "working harder" for them. They intentionally want their interface to be worse and "slower" because of the idiot dark pattern that our dumb monkey brains think that "serious things" like taxes need lots of "calculation time".

jandrese 5y ago
It wasn't even the stupid "spinning numbers" thing that slowed us down. Mostly it was being locked into wizards asking us one question at a time. Dialog: Do you have foreign bank accounts? Y/N Next dialog: Do you have foreign investments? Y/N Next dialog: ... For every single damn thing. FreeTaxUSA put them all in a list so we just clicked on the applicable ones. It was much more efficient. And if you have to go back and double check/change something TurboTax makes you go through the whole damn wizard again. TurboTax is supposedly able to import my W2 automatically (I work for a large corporation that use a large professional third party company to do W2s), but this has never worked. I always have to enter the information by hand.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  I always go to the forms and ignore the interview. I haven't found any other software that is practical to use in this way and has all the forms I need. I tried H&R Block's free software one year, I think, because I was mad at Intuit, but it was useless because there were big gaping holes in the functionality.
  - mypalmike 5y ago
    I'm curious what the big gaping holes are. I've used H&R and its predecessor, TaxCut, to do my returns for like 20 years (minus 1 or 2 years where I hired a CPA due to complicated investments and tax credits). I find it very straightforward and fast to use.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us somehow Don’t you have to sign to say that you’re entitled to that return? How are you doing it if you don’t understand where it’s coming from?

adrusi 5y ago
The person paying the taxes is not always expected to understand exactly how the tax code applies to them. IANAL but I think that when you hire a human tax accountant, their saying that your return is legally sufficient for you to testify that you are entitled to your return as filed. I don't know how that would apply to tax software, but I imagine that for purposes that TurboTax is appropriate for, saying "well TurboTax, a widely used and generally respected accounting tool generated this return, so I believe that it is correct," would be sufficient. Of course if it turned out that you were not entitled to the full refund you filed for, you would still be liable to pay back the difference, but you wouldn't be assessed an additional fine. Again IANAL, this is how I expect the law would work, not necessarily how it actually works.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  IANAL as well, but you would possibly have a case for a civil lawsuit against TurboTax

notshift 5y ago

I did the same this year, but found that FreeTaxUSA's support for crypto transactions was basically non-existent. Filing through TurboTax was way less work than what I would've had to do with FreeTaxUSA.

xyzelement 5y ago

This is the sort of critical thing. You do your taxes once a year but the impact could be hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. In your case it was only 50 but thematically this says that TT is better because it found you more credits/deductions. You don't know it's gonna "only" be 50 ahead of time. And the more complexity/money is at stake, the more important it is to get right. Once you are talking about potentially real money, the quality of the UI becomes quite secondary in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, would love for the IRS to offer a standard free filing solution. But short of that, I want the thing that is most likely to get me the biggest legal return

voakbasda 5y ago
The quality of the UI likely reflects the quality of the overall system. If the UI is flashy trash, you really want to trust the same programmers with actual math? Source: programmer for 30 years
jandrese 5y ago
It could also be that TurboTax gets $50 less on the next person. I was working with only a single datapoint. Also, from what I recall the extra $50 seemed to be coming from TurboTax counting a deduction for double what FreeTaxUSA did. I really didn't understand what it was doing there.