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Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

Use Free Tax USA. Federal is free. If you need to file state, it is $15. I’ve used it for years and it works great. For a number of years I prepared my taxes on both Turbo Tax (without actually paying for it) and Free Tax USA. They always came up with the same numbers.

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I find that FreeTaxUSA has a much better interface than TurboTax. They don't play games with fake loading screens needlessly making you wait (when we both know that the math involved takes just a few CPU cycles) and make the whole experience much easier with fewer upsells, but the biggest deal for me is that they're far more transparent about how everything maps to the underlying documents.

TurboTax wants you to be scared of the tax forms, so they make it really hard to see what it is that you're actually doing and signing. FreeTaxUSA actively encourages you to look at and understand the forms you're filling out and signing at every step of the way. After a few years with them I actually feel that I could fill out my taxes by hand, but I don't want to because their interface is a genuine improvement on the tax forms, as opposed to TurboTax's which is very much not.

My understanding of the tax code has shot up dramatically since switching to them, and I feel much safer submitting taxes now than I ever did with TurboTax because I understand every single line I submitted.

Good to know, I've been doing it by hand (well, Free Fillable Forms) because I hate how opaque and shady TurboTax is. I'll try this one next year

I prefer Free Tax USA over Turbo Tax. Switched several years ago and haven't looked back.

The last 2 years, I paid the $8 for chat support to answer some questions I had and both times their answers saved me a lot more than the $8. Very knowledgeable and can see my numbers to give me specific guidance and answers.

Second this. Been using them for years. Took under an hour.

Never give money, business or data to Intuit

Does anyone have recommendations to replace Credit Karma? I previously really liked the service, pretty straightforward, but it was recently bought by Intuit. Tried to login over web and it just redirected me to an app.

If you mean the tax filing product, Credit Karma Taxes, that was bought by Block (Cash App) a few years ago and is now named Cash App Taxes.

I've used it for the past few years, but this year had a more slightly more complicated tax situation due to switching investment brokerages and making more trades than usual and I found it kind of annoying to deal with. I switched to FreeTaxUSA this year and it worked quite well, so I'll definitely be using it instead of Credit Karma/Cash App Taxes next year.

I do similar things with SoFi.

https://www.sofi.com/financial-insights/

It's pretty decent. I use it all the time.

I know this sounds kinda promo-iy, but they'll do a mutual signup bonus so if you actually want to sign up, it's a $25 bonus for you with this link https://www.sofi.com/invite/money?gcp=b3f052b0-5031-473e-a90...

sorry if that seems spammy -- I've never shared anything like this. Check my history if you want.

I just genuinely like them

I can’t recommend Monarch strongly enough. It is a service that aggregates across bank accounts, brokerage, credit cards, etc.

The killer feature for me is that it provides overall money in/money out, with some good visualizations too. This is nontrivial for anyone using multiple credit cards or bank accounts, and is *critical* information for being a responsible adult IMO.

It also has budgeting, investment tracking tools, etc. But these stay out of your way if you just want to look at overall metrics like in/out over time, or net worth.

I showed my financial advisor and he was so impressed he picked up their advisor product (https://www.monarchmoney.com/for-professionals). So I don’t have to pay for a subscription anymore myself!

I strongly believe everyone should use a tool like Monarch for financial situational awareness.

$15 discount via my referral link (but I don’t get anything because my account is paid for via my financial advisor): https://www.monarchmoney.com/referral/b3q5nmkw2r

Wish I hadn't been funding Intuit after using FreeTaxUSA this year. Maybe the import isn't as great, but I found it overall a bit more intuitive than TurboTax

Another vote for Free Tax USA. I’m angry that free file is gone, but these folks seem like they care about the craft of building good software and good interfaces, and I’m happy to pay them for the state return even though it’s easy enough to just copy and paste into the state website.

There is also Open Tax Solver (https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/), which has been available since 2003.

100%. I've used them for the last few years, and it's as easy as it can be for normie taxes (things can break down if you get into Schedules, but maybe I should have hired an accountant).

I used to be a hardcore "the government should stop playing 'I'm thinking of a number' and just tell me what I owe", but the rise of these internet tax apps has kind of obviated the need. And with multiple competitors, you can even check the others work.

I've heard about this for a few years but never tried. Do they handle like if you have rental income, foreign bank accounts, and other complications? Thanks!

What is the security story, including confidentiality and their capability to secure your information?

Edit: A partial answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724779

Just another vote here for Free Tax USA. Another point is that they iterate and improve every year. Last year my son had to file in two different states, and the process flow was a bit wonky (you had to create a space holder return for the second state before returning back to the first state form). They fixed it this year and it worked great.

Does it handle RSUs?

It does. It'll also let you do cost basis adjustments just like TurboTax.

Yup! ESPP too.

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