I have used TaxAct.com for over a decade and just sort of lived with the continual price increases because I was happy with the software and the fact that they had my prior years information made life a little easier. But this year they wanted to charge me like $100 for federal and $60 for state and I finally tapped out.
After a bit of research, I found FreeTaxUSA. I was skeptical as it seemed a little too good to be true. Basically, federal filing is free and state was like $18. They do offer some add-ons like audit defense, but all of that is optional. Anyway, I just filed and it turned out not to be too good to be true. I would concede that the software is maybe slightly less user friendly than TaxAct, but I had no real issues. Why would anyone pay $170 when they can get the same service for $18? I wish that I had made the switch years ago.
Posted by rs1971
3 Comments
TurboTax and TaxAct advertise harder, so they’re more well known. My credit cards currently have cash back offers for TurboTax and TaxAct, not for FreeTaxUSA (although it’s still the better deal overall). People get tricked into paying more because they don’t realize there’s an alternative.
Exactly. I switched from TaxAct to FTU maybe 5 years ago when the price got crazy. Unless your filing something like Form 1041, I’m not sure why anyone would use TaxAct. They seem to position it between H&R Block and TurboTax for pricing, but from a capability point of view I would think it would be between TaxSlayer and H&R Block which is a lot lower price point. TaxAct use to be the provider that operated in the space that FTU does now until they were purchased by private equity and decided to charge to the point of embarrassment. Anyone understand their pricing and why people pay it?
I agree with you that FTU should work for 90% of people, and the other 10% can use OLT which is even cheaper if you know tax prep pretty well. There is also CashApp taxes which is totally free on the low end for fairly simple taxes. So I personally see no reason to pay more then $30 to file state and federal unless you have to file 1041s or unless you get value out of some of the integrations that TurboTax and H&R Block have.
Does it work well with AirBnB and rental income?