Comment by alehul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alehul | Hacker News Reader

In my experience this year, TurboTax prompted me that I could save money by upgrading to a paid plan via taking advantage of some extra deduction. I thought, "if it's going to save me more than I pay for it, why not?"

I clicked through and found that this deduction wouldn't actually save me any money. I then couldn't find a way to get back to the free plan (they only charge you after you file, so this should be possible).

After struggling for a while, I called Turbotax support, which had me download screen-sharing software and kept telling me to press some button to cancel the paid plan, and it wouldn't work, telling me that it wasn't possible to switch back. He couldn't figure it out, couldn't switch it off on his end, and eventually told me I would have to create a new Turbotax account and start over.

Oh, and for the icing on the cake, he never stopped the screen-sharing session, and saw me input my SSN when I recreated my account. (Yes, I'm aware that I'm a fool for not closing it out myself, but I was really stressed, and it would've been professional to end the screen-sharing after we ended the call.)

They lost me as a customer this year because of this exact reason.

I started doing my taxes in turbo tax this year. After a few screens I got the upgrade option for extra deductions and saving money. I clicked ok and got upgraded. I followed through the entire taxes and my return didn’t change. NO WAY to downgrade. Clearly, they got theirs.

I opened up Taxact and filled up their forms and my returns were the same without upgrading (to their equivalent option). I filed with TaxAct and removed my info from TurboTax. I will definitely use them to compare my taxes if I ever have to but I will not file using TurboTax. POS.

To downgrade you need to delete all the info you entered and start over. That's definitely a dark pattern

I had a similar experience. I wanted to compare the results (in terms of taxes owed) from the two plans. As I recall, my only option to get "back" to the free plan was to start over completely.

Same thing happened to me! A few years ago, in addition to my normal job I had some 1099 Misc income. It was the first year I had taxes that I wasn't familiar with, since I wasn't sure how the 1099 Misc would come into play. As I was filling it out, TurboTax prompted me to upgrade to a paid plan, and they estimated they could get me an additional $1200 dollars back on my refund. Even if they are overestimating, paying $80 and getting $400 back is worth it. So I went with it and filled out the new information. I got absolutely nothing added to my refund: $0. It's a ridiculous dark pattern, and I'll never give TurboTax another dime.

The paid plan upgrade is based on which forms you input, not necessarily which deduction you get. So hypothetically, even if your best choice is the standard deduction, they expect you to pay if you have some of those other tax forms.

I guess my question is, if you know the standard deduction is the right choice, can you just not input the tax forms that you don't need for that?

Everyone should just use freetaxusa.com. I've used it for years, the UI looks almost the same as TurboTax and costs like 12$ total to file both state and federal.

Can I point on the inherent irony of recommending a site called "free"taxusa that costs $12 to file?

In Texas, or any other state without state income tax, it's $0. The federal part is always free.

I don't know if the standard deduction is right for me (after the latest tax reform it probably is, but previously my deductions were close to the line so I needed to do my forms both ways to find out)

No, you need to file every tax form that applies to you. I assume you are talking about forms like the 1099-B, which TurboTax charges you to file (~$80 IIRC). If you don't file a form and the IRS knows about it, you will have a bad time.

I wonder if they "fixed" something - I remember them trying to sucker me into the paid plan and there was a way to click back enough/reject their advances to get free again.

I switched to taxact a number of years back because of this shit. They aren’t perfect in the upselling either but at least you can start as many new returns on an account as you want.

I couldn’t import shit from many things anyway so last couple of years I’ve just used excel and the fillable PDFs.

Oh this year wasn't the first time I saw it. They basically tempt you with possibility and then make you redo all your work when you realize they were lying. Stopped using them this year, fuckers.

What?! You can't just "start a new account" can you? What if you used their other services, which they use a single sign on for?

Your SSN is not a password

Well, it certainly shouldn't be, but the corporate machine has more power than I do in what my SSN is used for, sadly.

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