6 ms·
This is great news; no matter how restricted it may be initially, I think having a "guaranteed-free" tax filing system will be great for most people, especially
by tombert 3y ago
This is great news; no matter how restricted it may be initially, I think having a "guaranteed-free" tax filing system will be great for most people, especially lower-income people.
The private companies have demonstrated pretty clearly that they will do everything they can to avoid people actually having free tax filing, and while ~$50-100 might not seem like a ton of money, keep in mind that at the current United States minimum wage ($7.25 as of this writing), it would take upwards of working 6-14 hours just to pay for tax filing. $100 is a lot of money when you're not a yuppie software engineer.
I suspect I did enough crazy stuff with stocks this year that it probably won't apply to me at first, but hopefully by 2025 or 2026 I can stop giving money to Intuit or Jackson Hewitt.
- radlad 3y agoFWIW, FreeTaxUSA[0] is much cheaper than Intuit and has worked great for me the past few years. I find it slightly easier than TurboTax, in fact. [0] https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/
- coconut08 3y agosorry... cheaper? surely a place called free tax usa would be free?
- BizarroLand 3y agoThey are free for federal electronic filing, and charge a small fee for state filing.
- ziddoap 3y agoWell... free is cheaper than not free.
- starik36 3y agoIt is free for federal taxes. The only thing that you are paying for are state taxes.
- varjag 3y agoFree as in the land of the free, not as in beer.
- clnq 3y agoFree as in marketing.
- rez9x 3y agoI've used FreeTaxUSA since 2014 and I've never had to pay for federal, but I have had to pay something for state file. I think it's around $20.
- TJSomething 3y agoIt's free for me, but I don't have state income taxes.
- asdff 3y agoIts free for state as well if you qualify
- tombert 3y agoJackson Hewitt Online isn't terribly pricey (Cost me a total of about $25 last year), so that's what I've used for the last two years. Keep in mind that Jackson Hewitt Online is a different thing that the vanilla Jackson Hewitt Still, I kind of feel annoyed that I have to pay any amount of money to do something legally required of me to avoid going to jail. I think the IRS should provide a free option for filing, and TurboTax/FreeTaxUSA/Jackson Hewitt would be forced to provide a better service than "the bare minimum".
- loeg 3y agoYou can fill out the forms manually for free? It just sucks.
- tombert 3y agoI've thought about doing that before just to say that I've done it, but it always seemed a bit intimidating. I also have completely illegible handwriting now, so filling anything in by hand is effectively a non-starter.
- loeg 3y agoYou can fill in a PDF form rather than writing it by hand.
- bluGill 3y agoI quit doing paper forms ~10 years ago when I missed coping line 12c from form 5678-e to line 34-f of form 9876-k. The hassle of correcting that was enough to make me quit doing taxes by hand. It takes longer to do my taxes via the web forms than it did by hand (which says just how bad the UI of tax prep is!), but it saves me from human mistakes. Note that the ISR already has all the information they need to do my taxes for me. They just don't do them.
- tomcam 3y ago> it saves me from human mistakes Not me! FreeFillableForms is apparently the last piece of software in the western world that doesn’t save your progress as you go. I found that out the hard way about three days ago and immediately switched to freetaxusa.
- tomcam 3y agoJust used FreeTaxUSA this week for the first time. Crazy good UI. Highly recommended.
- mtgentry 3y agoI second this, FreeTaxUSA is great.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- notyourwork 3y agoFirst time user last year. Pleased with the UX, would repeat unless IRS gives new an option.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoDon’t you already get free filing below some income threshold?
- petsfed 3y agoYes, and Intuit lost a court case recently because there was only 1 way to get to it, and it required following a series of dark patterns to do so. I got ~$35 out of it, which was nice.
- yohannparis 3y agoThere is free filling using the official government tool. And there is free filling created by for profit businesses.
- nashashmi 3y agoJust print out the sheet from your broker of all the trades you did with the end result of gains circled. Send that in. You should be ok from doing anything more complex.
- fire 3y agoare you referring to like when you do summarized trades? or something else?
- nashashmi 3y agoEvery transaction of stock should be listed. The broker will total the gains. If you want to play with the rules with a little bit more finesse (like trying to leverage the 30 day end of year rule), you will have to do this manually.
- erik_seaberg 3y agoIf you buy or vest more shares, you might not be able to use capital losses to offset your gains until you understand the wash-sale rule.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoYou didn't hear this from me, but allegedly the IRS doesn't give a shit about wash sales via RSU vesting. YMMV, IANAL, IANAA, IARPA, etc etc
- mmanfrin 3y agoYou are doing your taxes wrong and should be careful this ain't audited.
- nashashmi 3y agoI don't know how that could be such a thing. Basically, you don't have to necessarily use any of their forms. You simply list down all income totaled by category of taxation, list out all value appreciation and depreciation that you are considering to be part of the year's gains and losses, and provide backup material of how you came to those numbers (if that is even necessary). Taxes were made to be done on a simple blank sheet of paper. The forms are more instructional record keepers, than they are systems of procedure every taxpayer must follow.
- oh_sigh 3y agoNo one earning $7.25 is going to pay anything to file their taxes, unless they got duped(which is totally possible).
- somat 3y agoIt's worse than that, them are the prime target for rebate advance loans, Very convenient only 30% interest.
- freeone3000 3y agoI’ve been using https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes ; cross-checked with my manual form filing and it’s spot on. Print and mail and save the hassle :)
- adventured 3y ago> keep in mind that at the current United States minimum wage ($7.25 as of this writing), it would take upwards of working 6-14 hours just to pay for tax filing Relatively few people in the US earn the Federal minimum wage. It's less than 1/2 of 1% of the labor force. It's a very poor reference for anything in terms of personal finance comparisons. You can walk into a CVS or Walgreens and earn $15 / hr as the minimum scanning barcodes with zero experience, zero job history, as a teenager. You'll get heavily subsidized health insurance, dental, vision, and PTO. On top of that, the majority of US states have a higher minimum wage than the Federal. If you're still earning the Federal minimum wage at this point, it's almost always by choice (if you don't want to work for Costco, Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens, et al.).
- mmanfrin 3y ago> It's less than 1/2 of 1% of the labor force. So it's only millions of people.
- lolinder 3y agoAccording to BLS, 141k workers earned exactly minimum wage in 2022, with another 882k earning a base rate under minimum wage [0]. The latter category, though, isn't the complete picture, because tips and commissions would tend to push compensation up over minimum wage as a rule. Of the 141k, 53k are teenagers, so that leaves 88k full adults (age 20+) making minimum wage. That's not nothing, but it represents 0.1% of those paid an hourly rate and 0.06% of the workforce as a whole. [0] https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm
- refurb 3y agoNope. 167,929,000 * 0.5% = 839,645
- up2isomorphism 3y agoLikely it comes from your tax, so calling it free might be just an illusion.
- pipodeclown 3y agoI find it bizarre that this is even a market in the US. I would think enabling people to do their taxes is a basic task of the government. Where I'm from the government provides a very simple click through filing system. Most information is auto filled from info the government already has or is manditorily shared with it such as my income as reported by my employer and any tax withholdings performed by them, securities holdings at brokers, houses registered on my name etc. I basically just have to click 'yep, that all sounds right', and I'm done. The tax authorities slogan over here is "we can't make doing your taxes fun, we can make it easy".
- over_bridge 3y agoYeah it's wild that you have to calculate your own bill to the government. Just tell me the amount and I'll pay it.