They charge $14.99 for the state filing. Usually a coupon code available. Or go to the state's website (CA at least), and file that for free, too. But for the convenience of not having to input my info again, I'll pay their fee.
Also, supporting TaxHawk means supporting a company that cares about their employees. They have done so many things for my relative that it makes me jealous. They have also kept raising wages ahead of inflation.
Anyway, TaxHawk is a great company to support!
I would say you need your own accountant and not software if:
1) You have complexities involving trusts/inheritance
2) Anything involving crypto (this is just a grey area to me and things change)
3) Anything that sounds more complex than anything above.
If you're getting a bunch of 1099-DIVs/INT & W2/W9s it's not super complex.
5) Foreign income, other than simple investment income (e.g., own stocks in foreign companies).
That is not true. Perhaps what you mean is that capital gains on assets held less than a year are taxed at a different rate than capital gains on assets held longer than a year?
Don't mean to get pedantic but I didn't want someone to read your comment and think that they owe no taxes on short-term capital gains. (What a crazy tax incentive that would be!)
If anyone has any recommendations I’m all ears
No affiliation or anything.
I send my bank statements, credit card bills and other documents to my accountant. He produces a return, together with optimisation advice for the coming year. It’s well worth the money. (I also have real estate, private equity, fund interests and emerging trust situations, and am multi-state.)
1. You don't have to figure out which forms to file by yourself. This quickly becomes non-trivial if you run a business, take a lot of deductions, or have weird forms of income.
2. The IRS sees that your return was prepared by a professional, so it is much less likely that they will try for an audit (since a professional will be representing you).
If your tax liability is under $100k and your return is under ~20 pages, you mostly don't need one, but an accountant also doesn't charge much either (about the same price as TurboTax).
Do you have an example of what other products provide for this? Does IRS Free File do better in this regard?
My relative has had to do UX work, and at least to me, it sounds like they care about it. But my relative also talks about how they're not the best at it.
So can you explain in more detail what you are wanting? Do you want some sort of way to see a line item list of what the tax bill is?
(and it really bothers me that taxhawk.com and freetaxusa.com are mimics of each other... why have two sites with different branding that are under the cover the same thing?)
The two sites are targeting different kinds of people. That's why they exist. They are the same (and same company) because in the end, everyone has to go through the same processes for taxes.
As for keeping the tax return data on their server, it's for convenience and possibly for other reasons. My relative believes that, for legal reasons, FreeTaxUSA is considered a "tax preparer" and needs to keep those records.
Some states don't offer a free-file option. My memory, which is at least a few years out of date, is that MI doesn't.
My problem has never been with the filling out the forms—my situation isn't complicated enough for that to be difficult, especially compared with the federal forms; it's with the filing. I just get so annoyed at the refusal of these agencies (like MI's, at least back when I incurred taxes there) to accept something that is surely more convenient for them and for me both, namely for me to file electronically. What do they gain by requiring me to print out and mail them a paper document that they then have to open and scan?
I've looked at https://www.trybookmate.co/tax previously