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I'm a tech worker with a simple W2 and 401K and a student loan I'm still paying off every year and this Direct File experience was my favorite. It was so clean

I'm a tech worker with a simple W2 and 401K and a student loan I'm still paying off every year and this Direct File experience was my favorite. It was so clean. So simple. I could understand every single step of it, even the helpful breakdowns along the way. Bonus: No bullshit screens holding you up while it "checks the accuracy" or "finishes things up" like other tax prep software does if only to make you feel like you're getting your moneys' worth out of it when it already computed those numbers 5 hours ago. I had one (major) snag with the NY filing side which was fixed revolving around data transfer (and I suspect I was filing early enough in the program I caught it 'first' so it took a little longer to fix), so I hope that helped everyone else in NY that got to use it! I legitimately cannot wait to file my taxes again next year with this system. EDIT: Here, I know it's silly, but here's a (redacted) screenshot of my whopping $73 refund from the government: https://i.imgur.com/9FoxRts.png https://i.imgur.com/9FoxRts.png - nice, simple English breakdowns are... so good.

MikeTheGreat 2y ago
> Bonus: No bullshit screens holding you up while it "checks the accuracy" or "finishes things up" like other tax prep software does if only to make you feel like you're getting your moneys' worth out of it when it already computed those numbers 5 hours ago. That's awesome! One of my big pet peeves around TurboTax is the way is intentionally pauses my multi-core, hyper-threaded, zillion gigahertz computers from doing 1960's level calculations (IF user checked off option A, then multiply by whatever)... so that it can look like it's busy. Congrats to Intuit for fully automating the process of "looking busy for the boss", I guess.
- kotaKat 2y ago
  I went from zero to filed in 11 minutes on the federal side. Amazingly fast. For the state side it's a little more complex (because of Events), but essentially the flow is to wait for the IRS to accept the Direct File first (which took only 2 minutes). Which also meant - holy hell, the IRS has already signed off on my tax return, basically, which kicks off the refund flow. Once that happened, I was invited to continue the data transfer and approve an IRS Oauth-esque flow to send data onwards to FileMyStateTaxes. I assume now that I fixed the snags this time around next year the state side should also only take about 10 more minutes.
SamuelAdams 2y ago
Those screenshots are really helpful. I hope this improves people’s understanding of their taxes. There are so many posts on /r/personalfinance where people claim they “paid $0 on taxes this year”. What they typically mean is that they owed nothing when they filed a return, or received a refund. They still paid taxes, it was simply taken out of their paycheques and paid in full by year end.

MikeTheGreat 2y ago

> Bonus: No bullshit screens holding you up while it "checks the accuracy" or "finishes things up" like other tax prep software does if only to make you feel like you're getting your moneys' worth out of it when it already computed those numbers 5 hours ago. That's awesome! One of my big pet peeves around TurboTax is the way is intentionally pauses my multi-core, hyper-threaded, zillion gigahertz computers from doing 1960's level calculations (IF user checked off option A, then multiply by whatever)... so that it can look like it's busy. Congrats to Intuit for fully automating the process of "looking busy for the boss", I guess.

kotaKat 2y ago
I went from zero to filed in 11 minutes on the federal side. Amazingly fast. For the state side it's a little more complex (because of Events), but essentially the flow is to wait for the IRS to accept the Direct File first (which took only 2 minutes). Which also meant - holy hell, the IRS has already signed off on my tax return, basically, which kicks off the refund flow. Once that happened, I was invited to continue the data transfer and approve an IRS Oauth-esque flow to send data onwards to FileMyStateTaxes. I assume now that I fixed the snags this time around next year the state side should also only take about 10 more minutes.

SamuelAdams 2y ago

Those screenshots are really helpful. I hope this improves people’s understanding of their taxes. There are so many posts on /r/personalfinance where people claim they “paid $0 on taxes this year”. What they typically mean is that they owed nothing when they filed a return, or received a refund. They still paid taxes, it was simply taken out of their paycheques and paid in full by year end.