First let me state I am grateful for the existence of freetaxusa. I used it for the first time this year and am very happy with it, and happy to escape the clutches of Intuit and H&R Block. The program is generally smooth and works well but I did notice some warts that need improving. I think all of these are easily improvable so they are not deal killers by any means, but being forewarned about these might help other users.
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When it read in my previous year's tax return, it misclassified a 1099-R as a 1099-INT. I had to delete it from the investment accounts section and re-add it to the retirement section manually. It did read in this year's 1099-R PDF form correctly though.
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When it read in the PDF of my wife's W-2 it completely missed a $31k item in box 12. On the other hand, it correctly read in a couple of items in Box 14 that have confounded TurboTax for years. This just shows the importance of verifying any PDF you have any tax program read in.
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User interface flaw— when it reads in 1099 (and maybe other) forms it names them after the issuer, and there isn't a way to edit them in the user interface to give them a new name or nickname … It would be nice to be able to name them things like "His retirement acct" or "Her retirement acct" instead of just Fidelity and Fidelity (note it's fully possible that I missed how to do this so if it's possible please let me know!)
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The biggest flaw is that when you're in a multiple entry screen it can time out without warning and lose your work, which is super frustrating. I was in the charitable donations screen and had entered about a dozen donations and was searching for receipts for more when it popped up and said "you'll be logged out in two minutes, do you want to stay active"? I clicked to stay active, but instead of returning to the screen I was working on, it returned to the overall deductions screen without saving any of the donations I had already entered. I had to to do that part over. Lesson: save frequently when you're on one of those multiple entry screens!
Overall a great program, hopefully it will only get better!
Freetaxusa first time user… there are warts
byu/Xyzzydude intax
Posted by Xyzzydude
4 Comments
To me it’s not as streamlined as Turbo. But I did my taxes on both freetax and turbo and ended up getting almost $500 more on freetax. So I filed with them. I got my federal back 6 days after and still waiting on my state return
I used it for my partner’s taxes last year and this year. It’s really great for people who have straightforward taxes. I was actually surprised that it automatically ported last years returns. The only thing is that I went to submit them and apparently IRS needed additional info to confirm ID, and it required last year’s AGI. I couldn’t access last years returns to get it, so I had to open a PDF on a different device just so I wouldn’t time out. I’ve done his taxes for years and this was the first time I’ve been asked for previous year’s AGI.
It was quick too. I filed them and they were accepted a few hours later. Already gotten the refund even though the IRS Where’s My Refund status is still on pending. Refund actually showed up on a Saturday and that’s NEVER happened before.
Keep in mind the form scanning is still in beta.
It would have been faster to just type the forms in.