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The upsells on TurboTax are getting a lot more shameless in recent years. I saw the exact same one pop up at least 2-3 times. The one that really aggravated m

The upsells on TurboTax are getting a lot more shameless in recent years. I saw the exact same one pop up at least 2-3 times. The one that really aggravated me though was the one at the end: after you FILE your taxes, they present this damned progress-bar looking thing as if you are somehow “not done” yet, as if this totally optional product sale is a required step!! No, no, no, that is just misleading garbage, and it is so annoying to have to constantly hunt around the page for the magic text to get around these things. I mean, I couldn’t even reach the page that lets me download my forms as PDF until I skipped this upsell. What’s more, the product itself is getting more expensive but worse. On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI (are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?) with all kinds of things unnecessarily hidden. On page after page, there is more than enough space to show everything but instead it’s giant white space everywhere; they HIDE things behind disclosure arrows, and with no logic whatsoever; e.g. on one page it shows the 2020 numbers by default but hides all the 2021 numbers behind arrows!? Guess what isn’t an insultingly-small, truncated experience on desktop? The ads, the upsells. THOSE are full-page, taking full advantage of screen space and even scrolling off the edges. Really shows their priorities.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> What’s more, the product itself is getting more expensive but worse. The product must get more expensive for Turbo Tax to deliver growth to its shareholders.
______-_-______ 4y ago
Can I ask, in spite of all this, why you continue to use their product?
- bojo 4y ago
  Not the OP, however, I haven't found a product that's easy to drop options trading data into. I'd love to switch off of TurboTax, but I'm not putting hundreds of trades into a system manually - their import function makes it a breeze. Perhaps it's time to hire an accountant?
  - xivzgrev 4y ago
    do you have to document every trade? At the end of the day the IRS cares about your net loss or gain, and what's short term vs long term gains. So I typically sum up my various investments into those 2 buckets, by broker. if i ever get audited, i have the individual trades i can share if needed.
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      It's right in the instructions for a 1040 that you must complete form 8949 if you have any capital gains or losses, and form 8949 says to list out each sale.
      - junar 4y ago
        This is not true for most folks, who can use one of two exceptions that allow summarizing. Exception 1 allows you to simply report totals on Schedule D. Exception 2 has you file Form 8949 with summarized rows, as long as you attach a statement with the detailed transaction info (the brokerage 1099-B generally suffices). https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#en_US_2021_publink59421zd0e1698 https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#en_US_2021_publink594... These are the very same exceptions that tax software uses.
        deathanatos 4y ago
        Exception 1, I grant, and TIL. I sort of presume I can take that (in my situation), although this directive is confusing: > The Ordinary box in box 2 isn’t checked There is no "box 2" on the 1099-Bs I have. It is on the standardized IRS one, so the instruction from the IRS seems fine … but this is a great commentary on the state of the American tax system and how complicated it is. (Variations on this theme cropped up multiple times during this year's prep, too…) Exception 2 doesn't seem to list out what the conditions to qualify for it are, it only lists the procedure for the exception. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to take it, for that reason. > These are the very same exceptions that tax software uses. TurboTax does not appear to take advantage of Exception 1. It would appear to have applied to my situation this year, and yet, TurboTax filled out a complete Form 8949, with each transaction, just like the parent comments hint at.
- fullstop 4y ago
  It depends on how much your time is worth. You can import prior returns and compare year-to-year.
ozzythecat 4y ago
You hit the nail on the head. Actually, we used TurboTax, got annoyed with the constant upsells, and the $80 fee (it was advertised as free), and then my husband redid our taxes using another website (freetaxusa). It was actually free.
- sngz 4y ago
  i just did my taxes last night and checked freetaxusa seems like they charge for state though? I ended up using credit karma's app which was still annoying after intuit bought them and they were forced to sell the tax software to square, and it required I download the mobile app first. It was much better in the past
  - trianglesphere 4y ago
    They do charge for state taxes. It’s like 15 bucks per return with not that much up sell. I’ve used them when I had simpler taxes and liked them over other common preparers
    - formerkrogemp 4y ago
      I help friends and family and I can't recommend freetaxusa for simple returns enough. It's so much cheaper if you're doing your own taxes. Tax slayer is decent as well.
    - everybodyknows 4y ago
      What were the complications that FTUSA could not handle, if you recall?
  - retzkek 4y ago
    I switched to freetaxusa this year (from TurboTax), and after such a wonderful experience working through my somewhat complicated taxes I was happy to pay them $15 to save me the trouble of typing the information into my state's free-but-lowball-government-contractor website.
  - phate 4y ago
civilized 4y ago
I'm on H&R Block, which I used to be pretty happy with, but it's also getting a lot worse. Much slower, pointless UI changes always in a bloaty direction, navigation is less functional, more upsell garbage, more expensive, etc. I've kept coming back until now out of habit and because they've got a lot of data on me they can prefill, but maybe I should look at FreeTaxUSA now.
- spear 4y ago
  Same here. I couldn't get their discount codes to work this year and the IRA Worksheets seem to be broken now.
- astrea 4y ago
  This year was a nightmare for me. The UI wouldn't save state, going through the same steps would lead me to different results ("Your state was e-filed!","Your state isn't accepting e-file."), and there was an alleged error but it would never tell or show me what the error was. Customer service was just as confused as I was and the "Get virtual assistance" button eventually disappeared for me. I ended up giving up and going to a local CPA to get it done for me. I don't think I'll be using HR Block next year after being a customer for over 5 years.
  - civilized 4y ago
    Yes, the "pick up where you left off" was a lot more fragile than in years past. And they sent me tons of emails begging me to finish filing after I already filed everything.
Stratoscope 4y ago
> On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI Meanwhile, the traditional desktop software version of TurboTax remains quite good, and I have been using it year after year on Windows. They have several editions; here is the one I used this year: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FW199HB/ https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FW199HB/ It's much cheaper to buy it on Amazon than directly from TurboTax.
- bubblethink 4y ago
  Why do all these tax companies have a web version and a desktop version ? Why isn't it all web at this point ?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    I am glad there are still desktop versions where I can keep the software indefinitely and keep my data offline. I’ll go back to pen and a desktop calculator before I use a web app.
    - outworlder 4y ago
      > I am glad there are still desktop versions where I can keep the software indefinitely That's useless for tax software though, unless they are getting updated every tax year.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - markkanof 4y ago
        I recently had to go back and file an amended return for one state and file a return for an additional state for the past 5 years. It made my life a lot easier to be able to just install the past 5 years versions of TurboTax Desktop which I had saved the installers for. I was able to run through this whole process using the tax rules that were in place at the time. Not sure if this would have worked on a web version or not, but I was pretty happy to have this option available to me.
felipellrocha 4y ago
I've been wondering lately why hasn't someone just built an open source version of it. It would be less buggy and more up-to-date than anything a corporation could build. It would also create the incentive to eventually get rid of the industry all together
- outworlder 4y ago
  The tax code is particularly complicated – and then there are multiple states to worry about. It would be difficult for a single person to do this. Not impossible, maybe there are some CPAs which are also software engineers. Once the project becomes big enough, maybe more people would help. The problem is then: are they shielded from liability? If there's a mistake and people sue, they won't have Intuit's lawyer army. But let's say we have the perfect program. Would people be OK with printing out and mailing their returns? Because you have to be an authorized provider to e-file.
  - dlp211 4y ago
    I would say that this IS impossible for any single individual. The amount of edge cases that software like this needs to capture is enormous and there isn't a single human in the world that could account for all of them. Not to mention the changes in the tax code every year.
- kube-system 4y ago
  It has been tried, but I haven’t seen any projects that were able to keep up.It takes a lot of manpower to update all of the various forms for every tax season. Congress can and has done things like pass a 1700+ page bill changing the tax code on Dec 20th of the same tax year, and some users will want to start filing their returns within a month. And there are 50 states that can do the same thing. Also it requires expertise outside of programming for which there is not much enthusiasm for open source.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    Becoming a CPA sucks. You need 150 credit hours, pass 4 exams with 50% pass rate, and usually needs 1 year of qualified experience to qualify. Programming is so much easier to get into.
asciimov 4y ago
> are that many people doing taxes on their phones!? More people than you would think. I have several coworkers with kids that don't have a single computer in their house other than their phones. If the kids need to use a computer they take home their work laptop.
techsupporter 4y ago
> the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI (are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?) Yes. According to Pew, in 2021 there were 15% of adults in the US who said they only have smartphone data for Internet access and do not have what we know as home broadband. By age, that number skews towards younger adults, with the largest share being people aged 18-29, however even older adults hover in the low teens of percent. Even if someone does have broadband at home, the number of "traditional" desktop and laptop computers have been dropping. Mobile phone and tablet devices (but, let's be honest, mostly mobile phones) have been replacing regular computers at a pretty high clip. And where a household does have a desktop or laptop, they may only have one, where almost everyone has a mobile phone device so it's probably convenient to just pull up the tax prep web site and get to it on the handheld. Pew data: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
- hanniabu 4y ago
  I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile....
  - geoduck14 4y ago
    >I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile.... It's not that bad. I have this great app that's only $30 /s
  - dham 4y ago
    People seem to like to do things on suboptimal devices. I've never quite understood it. Just the thought of wasting time not being able to use a mouse and keyboard makes 99% of tasks unbearable. But it's almost like you don't know what you don't know. My 6 year old was playing Minecraft on a tablet / console for a long time before moving to the computer. He's said several times about how much better he is at it on desktop. I've never even mentioned to him that one's technically better than the other.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    I don't know if mobile tax apps do this, but if they did I can totally imagine mobile being far easier for most people: Use your phone's camera to take a picture of your W-2, use OCR to extract the data & confirm with the user, ask the user a few questions for things not on the W-2, autofill the 1040.
rrauenza 4y ago
Every time I opened it this year it begged me to register. So they could capture my personal information to market to next year, or try to get me to “subscribe.” It seemed to also prompt again at exit. Really irritated me that I couldn’t opt out permanently but had to click skip every single time. And I’m tired of the progress bars pretending to be calculating in order to make me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. And yet I buy it begrudgingly every year because it is what I know, and it imports data fairly well from my online accounts. Do the alternative brands import w2’s and previous year’s turbo tax files? Does it integrate with online brokers for pulling 1099’s?
Teknoman117 4y ago
Their competitor TaxAct is being more brash as well. I've been filing the same forms for the last 5 years and the filing cost with them has risen gradually from $60 in 2017 to $130 this year.
gordon_freeman 4y ago
One bright spot in all this pay-to-file-taxes game is the "Cash App Taxes" [0]. It is just great and seamless to file taxes for free even for a bit complex taxes such as RSU, Stocks, Virtual currency sales etc. Usually what I do is just progress on TurboTax until the end so I could calculate my estimated refund and then go ahead and file using Cash App Taxes and it just saved me $150 this year. [0] https://cash.app/taxes https://cash.app/taxes
- ajdude 4y ago
  I've been using Credit Karma the last few years for taxes until they sold to Intuit, at which point their tax division went to cash.app. Initially I tried going with them until I realized that I had to download their app on my phone to even sign into the desktop to do my taxes (it was requesting I scan a QR code or something). I couldn't even access my previous tax returns that were stored on Credit Karma without downloading the cashapp to my phone. Eventually I caved, but only to contact their support to retrieve my returns and formally cancel my account. I shouldn't need to download an app to a smartphone for something that I exclusively intend to use on a desktop. I went with FreeTaxUSA in the end.
  - vgeek 4y ago
    Same path here. 2 years using Credit Karma, then jumped through hoops only to see that Cashapp couldn't locate my prior returns, so I just used Freetaxusa.
  - nybble41 4y ago
    > I shouldn't need to download an app to a smartphone for something that I exclusively intend to use on a desktop. I see where you're coming from here and mostly agree. However, I will say that as someone who already had the Cash App installed the process was pretty seamless. The only major item I would change is that it would be nice to have some way to import a CSV or XLS file (or even JSON) for the capital gains forms. They offer an online spreadsheet but you still have to fill out each cell individually. If you have a few dozen trades (or more) to report it gets rather tiresome and could even be a bit error-prone. I suppose I could have scripted the data entry with keyboard macros (via xdotool[0]), but for something I only do once per year it probably wouldn't be worthwhile… and the interface could be different next year. [0] https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool
otikik 4y ago
I agree that all those are bad, but the main problem I have with it is that it should be a state-provided (or federal government-provided, I don't care) service. If a country wants taxes the minimum it should do is tell its citizens how much each of them owns. Relying on a private company to provide that "for free" (as long as you jump through the hoops) is ... shameful.
- xyzzy21 4y ago
  In general, ANYTHING mandated by the government should be available primarily in minimally sufficient form from the government. That goes for insurance, fees, services, etc.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    And honestly it should just be TurboTax but paid for by the government like every other public-private partnership in other industries. Boom now the incentives are aligned.
    - treeman79 4y ago
      Isn’t the tax system still running on cobol? https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/wheres-my-check-cobol-unemployment-and-taxes/ https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/wheres-my-check-cob...
      - KerrAvon 4y ago
        There have been COBOL compilers for microcomputers since the early eighties.
    - guiambros 4y ago
      This. Coming from a country where the government offers a decent and free tax software, I really hate being hostage to TurboTax and their dark patterns. But honestly, the situation could be a lot worse if it were provided by the government, given the current tax code. To start with, we'd likely have the federal government + every state having different opinions on how to implement their version of the tax code, and spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with consultants and developers (vide health.gov [1]) to implement their own flavors. On the taxpayer side, you'd have to deal with at least two systems when doing your taxes, but potentially more if you lived in multiple states. In the best case scenario, some data would be portable between them (but likely not all, given the complexity and number of edge cases). In the worst, you'd have to enter the data manually in multiple systems, making it a nightmare to keep systems in sync. In this alternate universe, TurboTax doesn't look that bad anymore. The only way to solve this cleanly would be through a full reform of the tax code, including a drastic standardization and simplification across federal + states. But it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, and, not surprisingly, Intuit will be always lobbying heavily against it. Now, if government were to embrace a public-private partnership like you suggested, we can make meaningful progress faster. Create a white-label version that is offered for free to 140M taxpayers, align incentives on simplifying the tax code, and get the 3P ecosystem to develop advanced versions for more sophisticated users, businesses, etc to create extra incentives to continue improving the sw. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/obamacare-website-has-cost-840-million/440478/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/obamaca...
svachalek 4y ago
Some of the interactions are even too granular to make sense on mobile. I can't remember the specifics but there are some sequences that go like: Do you need to adjust the value here? (Yes) (No) ... new page slowly loads ... Do you need help calculating this value? (Yes) (No) (I don't want to change this value) ... new page slowly loads ... What should the value be? (I'll enter it manually) (Help me calculate it) (I don't want to change it) Like other than some basic wording changes, the third page already supports what the first two pages did. And depending how many stock trades are in your form you might have to repeat this loop a hundred times. It's really enraging.
SilasX 4y ago
In fairness, that third paragraph is pretty typical (horrifying) web UX these days, not something unique to Intuit or tax software. Let me open subsections in a new tab, FFS!
clairity 4y ago
so just stop using turbotax, h&r block, taxact, etc. try https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/ or any other decent competitor not trying to monopolize or regulatorially capture the market. for simple returns, just doing it by hand and mailing it in is easy enough too. vote with your feet.
- kaitai 4y ago
  I used to be able to do a return "by hand" (fine, using a spreadsheet). But now between the health insurance stuff and the child tax credit there is a whole raft of additional forms that did not even exist just a few years back.
  - beej71 4y ago
    If you don't anticipate your tax situation will change for a few years, you can get a professional tax preparer to do it one year and then copy the process yourself subsequent years.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

> What’s more, the product itself is getting more expensive but worse. The product must get more expensive for Turbo Tax to deliver growth to its shareholders.

______-_-______ 4y ago

Can I ask, in spite of all this, why you continue to use their product?

bojo 4y ago
Not the OP, however, I haven't found a product that's easy to drop options trading data into. I'd love to switch off of TurboTax, but I'm not putting hundreds of trades into a system manually - their import function makes it a breeze. Perhaps it's time to hire an accountant?
- xivzgrev 4y ago
  do you have to document every trade? At the end of the day the IRS cares about your net loss or gain, and what's short term vs long term gains. So I typically sum up my various investments into those 2 buckets, by broker. if i ever get audited, i have the individual trades i can share if needed.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    It's right in the instructions for a 1040 that you must complete form 8949 if you have any capital gains or losses, and form 8949 says to list out each sale.
    - junar 4y ago
      This is not true for most folks, who can use one of two exceptions that allow summarizing. Exception 1 allows you to simply report totals on Schedule D. Exception 2 has you file Form 8949 with summarized rows, as long as you attach a statement with the detailed transaction info (the brokerage 1099-B generally suffices). https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#en_US_2021_publink59421zd0e1698 https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#en_US_2021_publink594... These are the very same exceptions that tax software uses.
      - deathanatos 4y ago
        Exception 1, I grant, and TIL. I sort of presume I can take that (in my situation), although this directive is confusing: > The Ordinary box in box 2 isn’t checked There is no "box 2" on the 1099-Bs I have. It is on the standardized IRS one, so the instruction from the IRS seems fine … but this is a great commentary on the state of the American tax system and how complicated it is. (Variations on this theme cropped up multiple times during this year's prep, too…) Exception 2 doesn't seem to list out what the conditions to qualify for it are, it only lists the procedure for the exception. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to take it, for that reason. > These are the very same exceptions that tax software uses. TurboTax does not appear to take advantage of Exception 1. It would appear to have applied to my situation this year, and yet, TurboTax filled out a complete Form 8949, with each transaction, just like the parent comments hint at.
fullstop 4y ago
It depends on how much your time is worth. You can import prior returns and compare year-to-year.

ozzythecat 4y ago

You hit the nail on the head. Actually, we used TurboTax, got annoyed with the constant upsells, and the $80 fee (it was advertised as free), and then my husband redid our taxes using another website (freetaxusa). It was actually free.

sngz 4y ago
i just did my taxes last night and checked freetaxusa seems like they charge for state though? I ended up using credit karma's app which was still annoying after intuit bought them and they were forced to sell the tax software to square, and it required I download the mobile app first. It was much better in the past
- trianglesphere 4y ago
  They do charge for state taxes. It’s like 15 bucks per return with not that much up sell. I’ve used them when I had simpler taxes and liked them over other common preparers
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    I help friends and family and I can't recommend freetaxusa for simple returns enough. It's so much cheaper if you're doing your own taxes. Tax slayer is decent as well.
  - everybodyknows 4y ago
    What were the complications that FTUSA could not handle, if you recall?
- retzkek 4y ago
  I switched to freetaxusa this year (from TurboTax), and after such a wonderful experience working through my somewhat complicated taxes I was happy to pay them $15 to save me the trouble of typing the information into my state's free-but-lowball-government-contractor website.
- phate 4y ago

civilized 4y ago

I'm on H&R Block, which I used to be pretty happy with, but it's also getting a lot worse. Much slower, pointless UI changes always in a bloaty direction, navigation is less functional, more upsell garbage, more expensive, etc. I've kept coming back until now out of habit and because they've got a lot of data on me they can prefill, but maybe I should look at FreeTaxUSA now.

spear 4y ago
Same here. I couldn't get their discount codes to work this year and the IRA Worksheets seem to be broken now.
astrea 4y ago
This year was a nightmare for me. The UI wouldn't save state, going through the same steps would lead me to different results ("Your state was e-filed!","Your state isn't accepting e-file."), and there was an alleged error but it would never tell or show me what the error was. Customer service was just as confused as I was and the "Get virtual assistance" button eventually disappeared for me. I ended up giving up and going to a local CPA to get it done for me. I don't think I'll be using HR Block next year after being a customer for over 5 years.
- civilized 4y ago
  Yes, the "pick up where you left off" was a lot more fragile than in years past. And they sent me tons of emails begging me to finish filing after I already filed everything.

Stratoscope 4y ago

> On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI Meanwhile, the traditional desktop software version of TurboTax remains quite good, and I have been using it year after year on Windows. They have several editions; here is the one I used this year: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FW199HB/ https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FW199HB/ It's much cheaper to buy it on Amazon than directly from TurboTax.

bubblethink 4y ago
Why do all these tax companies have a web version and a desktop version ? Why isn't it all web at this point ?
- kube-system 4y ago
  I am glad there are still desktop versions where I can keep the software indefinitely and keep my data offline. I’ll go back to pen and a desktop calculator before I use a web app.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > I am glad there are still desktop versions where I can keep the software indefinitely That's useless for tax software though, unless they are getting updated every tax year.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - markkanof 4y ago
      I recently had to go back and file an amended return for one state and file a return for an additional state for the past 5 years. It made my life a lot easier to be able to just install the past 5 years versions of TurboTax Desktop which I had saved the installers for. I was able to run through this whole process using the tax rules that were in place at the time. Not sure if this would have worked on a web version or not, but I was pretty happy to have this option available to me.

felipellrocha 4y ago

I've been wondering lately why hasn't someone just built an open source version of it. It would be less buggy and more up-to-date than anything a corporation could build. It would also create the incentive to eventually get rid of the industry all together

outworlder 4y ago
The tax code is particularly complicated – and then there are multiple states to worry about. It would be difficult for a single person to do this. Not impossible, maybe there are some CPAs which are also software engineers. Once the project becomes big enough, maybe more people would help. The problem is then: are they shielded from liability? If there's a mistake and people sue, they won't have Intuit's lawyer army. But let's say we have the perfect program. Would people be OK with printing out and mailing their returns? Because you have to be an authorized provider to e-file.
- dlp211 4y ago
  I would say that this IS impossible for any single individual. The amount of edge cases that software like this needs to capture is enormous and there isn't a single human in the world that could account for all of them. Not to mention the changes in the tax code every year.
kube-system 4y ago
It has been tried, but I haven’t seen any projects that were able to keep up.It takes a lot of manpower to update all of the various forms for every tax season. Congress can and has done things like pass a 1700+ page bill changing the tax code on Dec 20th of the same tax year, and some users will want to start filing their returns within a month. And there are 50 states that can do the same thing. Also it requires expertise outside of programming for which there is not much enthusiasm for open source.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Becoming a CPA sucks. You need 150 credit hours, pass 4 exams with 50% pass rate, and usually needs 1 year of qualified experience to qualify. Programming is so much easier to get into.

asciimov 4y ago

> are that many people doing taxes on their phones!? More people than you would think. I have several coworkers with kids that don't have a single computer in their house other than their phones. If the kids need to use a computer they take home their work laptop.

techsupporter 4y ago

> the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI (are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?) Yes. According to Pew, in 2021 there were 15% of adults in the US who said they only have smartphone data for Internet access and do not have what we know as home broadband. By age, that number skews towards younger adults, with the largest share being people aged 18-29, however even older adults hover in the low teens of percent. Even if someone does have broadband at home, the number of "traditional" desktop and laptop computers have been dropping. Mobile phone and tablet devices (but, let's be honest, mostly mobile phones) have been replacing regular computers at a pretty high clip. And where a household does have a desktop or laptop, they may only have one, where almost everyone has a mobile phone device so it's probably convenient to just pull up the tax prep web site and get to it on the handheld. Pew data: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/ https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

hanniabu 4y ago
I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile....
- geoduck14 4y ago
  >I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile.... It's not that bad. I have this great app that's only $30 /s
- dham 4y ago
  People seem to like to do things on suboptimal devices. I've never quite understood it. Just the thought of wasting time not being able to use a mouse and keyboard makes 99% of tasks unbearable. But it's almost like you don't know what you don't know. My 6 year old was playing Minecraft on a tablet / console for a long time before moving to the computer. He's said several times about how much better he is at it on desktop. I've never even mentioned to him that one's technically better than the other.
- Izkata 4y ago
  I don't know if mobile tax apps do this, but if they did I can totally imagine mobile being far easier for most people: Use your phone's camera to take a picture of your W-2, use OCR to extract the data & confirm with the user, ask the user a few questions for things not on the W-2, autofill the 1040.

rrauenza 4y ago

Every time I opened it this year it begged me to register. So they could capture my personal information to market to next year, or try to get me to “subscribe.” It seemed to also prompt again at exit. Really irritated me that I couldn’t opt out permanently but had to click skip every single time. And I’m tired of the progress bars pretending to be calculating in order to make me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. And yet I buy it begrudgingly every year because it is what I know, and it imports data fairly well from my online accounts. Do the alternative brands import w2’s and previous year’s turbo tax files? Does it integrate with online brokers for pulling 1099’s?

Teknoman117 4y ago

Their competitor TaxAct is being more brash as well. I've been filing the same forms for the last 5 years and the filing cost with them has risen gradually from $60 in 2017 to $130 this year.

gordon_freeman 4y ago

One bright spot in all this pay-to-file-taxes game is the "Cash App Taxes" [0]. It is just great and seamless to file taxes for free even for a bit complex taxes such as RSU, Stocks, Virtual currency sales etc. Usually what I do is just progress on TurboTax until the end so I could calculate my estimated refund and then go ahead and file using Cash App Taxes and it just saved me $150 this year. [0] https://cash.app/taxes https://cash.app/taxes

ajdude 4y ago
I've been using Credit Karma the last few years for taxes until they sold to Intuit, at which point their tax division went to cash.app. Initially I tried going with them until I realized that I had to download their app on my phone to even sign into the desktop to do my taxes (it was requesting I scan a QR code or something). I couldn't even access my previous tax returns that were stored on Credit Karma without downloading the cashapp to my phone. Eventually I caved, but only to contact their support to retrieve my returns and formally cancel my account. I shouldn't need to download an app to a smartphone for something that I exclusively intend to use on a desktop. I went with FreeTaxUSA in the end.
- vgeek 4y ago
  Same path here. 2 years using Credit Karma, then jumped through hoops only to see that Cashapp couldn't locate my prior returns, so I just used Freetaxusa.
- nybble41 4y ago
  > I shouldn't need to download an app to a smartphone for something that I exclusively intend to use on a desktop. I see where you're coming from here and mostly agree. However, I will say that as someone who already had the Cash App installed the process was pretty seamless. The only major item I would change is that it would be nice to have some way to import a CSV or XLS file (or even JSON) for the capital gains forms. They offer an online spreadsheet but you still have to fill out each cell individually. If you have a few dozen trades (or more) to report it gets rather tiresome and could even be a bit error-prone. I suppose I could have scripted the data entry with keyboard macros (via xdotool[0]), but for something I only do once per year it probably wouldn't be worthwhile… and the interface could be different next year. [0] https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool

otikik 4y ago

I agree that all those are bad, but the main problem I have with it is that it should be a state-provided (or federal government-provided, I don't care) service. If a country wants taxes the minimum it should do is tell its citizens how much each of them owns. Relying on a private company to provide that "for free" (as long as you jump through the hoops) is ... shameful.

xyzzy21 4y ago
In general, ANYTHING mandated by the government should be available primarily in minimally sufficient form from the government. That goes for insurance, fees, services, etc.
- Spivak 4y ago
  And honestly it should just be TurboTax but paid for by the government like every other public-private partnership in other industries. Boom now the incentives are aligned.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    Isn’t the tax system still running on cobol? https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/wheres-my-check-cobol-unemployment-and-taxes/ https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/wheres-my-check-cob...
    - KerrAvon 4y ago
      There have been COBOL compilers for microcomputers since the early eighties.
  - guiambros 4y ago
    This. Coming from a country where the government offers a decent and free tax software, I really hate being hostage to TurboTax and their dark patterns. But honestly, the situation could be a lot worse if it were provided by the government, given the current tax code. To start with, we'd likely have the federal government + every state having different opinions on how to implement their version of the tax code, and spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with consultants and developers (vide health.gov [1]) to implement their own flavors. On the taxpayer side, you'd have to deal with at least two systems when doing your taxes, but potentially more if you lived in multiple states. In the best case scenario, some data would be portable between them (but likely not all, given the complexity and number of edge cases). In the worst, you'd have to enter the data manually in multiple systems, making it a nightmare to keep systems in sync. In this alternate universe, TurboTax doesn't look that bad anymore. The only way to solve this cleanly would be through a full reform of the tax code, including a drastic standardization and simplification across federal + states. But it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, and, not surprisingly, Intuit will be always lobbying heavily against it. Now, if government were to embrace a public-private partnership like you suggested, we can make meaningful progress faster. Create a white-label version that is offered for free to 140M taxpayers, align incentives on simplifying the tax code, and get the 3P ecosystem to develop advanced versions for more sophisticated users, businesses, etc to create extra incentives to continue improving the sw. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/obamacare-website-has-cost-840-million/440478/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/obamaca...

svachalek 4y ago

Some of the interactions are even too granular to make sense on mobile. I can't remember the specifics but there are some sequences that go like: Do you need to adjust the value here? (Yes) (No) ... new page slowly loads ... Do you need help calculating this value? (Yes) (No) (I don't want to change this value) ... new page slowly loads ... What should the value be? (I'll enter it manually) (Help me calculate it) (I don't want to change it) Like other than some basic wording changes, the third page already supports what the first two pages did. And depending how many stock trades are in your form you might have to repeat this loop a hundred times. It's really enraging.

SilasX 4y ago

In fairness, that third paragraph is pretty typical (horrifying) web UX these days, not something unique to Intuit or tax software. Let me open subsections in a new tab, FFS!

clairity 4y ago

so just stop using turbotax, h&r block, taxact, etc. try https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/ or any other decent competitor not trying to monopolize or regulatorially capture the market. for simple returns, just doing it by hand and mailing it in is easy enough too. vote with your feet.

kaitai 4y ago
I used to be able to do a return "by hand" (fine, using a spreadsheet). But now between the health insurance stuff and the child tax credit there is a whole raft of additional forms that did not even exist just a few years back.
- beej71 4y ago
  If you don't anticipate your tax situation will change for a few years, you can get a professional tax preparer to do it one year and then copy the process yourself subsequent years.