It is like looking behind the curtain and seeing the wizard of OZ. Doing your own taxes can be really easy witht the right software.

I did my taxes side by side to see where would get a bigger refund and FreeTaxUSA beat TurboTax by $200. http://tinyurl.com/freetaxusa

It’s worth checking out at least.

The only way you received free efiling from Turbotax is if you are below the AGI limit where the IRS allows you to efile for free. Any and all of the tax prep software allows for free filing under these circumstances. For those of us above that AGI limit Turbo tax is one of the priciest packages around.

I also vote for TaxAct….way cheaper than the big tax prep guys and just as good (turbotax, HR block).

It also blows my mind that I can send the IRS a paper copy of my tax return for 41 cents but it costs me 18 bucks (how much is it anyway?) to efile….

Start at Illinois IRS website: http://tax.illinois.gov/

Cheers,
Gan

I started with TaxAct in 2001 or 2002 because they offered a free program. Two years later I paid up the small charge which is well worth it since the program will automatically load all that info from the previous year’s filing. For about $12 and no efiling charge it is the best deal around!

Perhaps allowing companies to charge was originally a way to offset the set-up costs (servers/software/etc.), but the economies of scale here should allow the actual cost per return to drop fairly quickly. I believe that at $17.95 per transmission, we are getting ripped off. I will probably go back to submitting paper returns in protest until the price drops.

– K.

Moral of the story: Once I no longer qualify for the free filing, I’m not going to use H&R Block anymore… Hiding the fact that they even offer the free filing and requiring the direct link from IRS.gov to reach that functionality! For shame!

Also, I second Anca. I think it’s ridiculous that this entire process isn’t completely automated online for free by now.

The next year, I went back to Free File, and found that I no longer qualified because my AGI was too high. I was disappointed and a little angry, and was preparing to file a paper return, when I decided to go to TaxAct again just to check. Turns out that while I didn’t qualify for FreeFile, I still qualified to EFile for free at TaxAct.

Most recently, I skipped the IRS site altogether and went directly to TaxAct, which this year is advertising free EFiling without any restrictions.

My point is that if you want to EFile, and don’t see why you should have to pay extra for doing something that saves the IRS the work of manually processing your return, and FreeFile says you don’t qualify, you should still look around because you may very well still be able to EFile for free.

I better get started on those taxes

I think it depends on which ‘free file’ company you use. Some support self-employment and others do not. You have to check out each one independently to see.

NJS:

I prefer |pencil| and paper myself. I did two returns this year, both on paper… and then because they qualified for free submission, I entered them online…

One of them turned out perfectly (as in everything matched up nicely), but the second piece of online software would NOT allow me to ‘take’ a particular itemized deduction that is allowed in our state.

I hemmed and hawed a bit over the issue, and finally just mailed in the tax return. I’ll wait the extra weeks to get the return instead of losing some double-digit amt of money to the IRS just because it’s ‘easier’.

One thing they don’t tell you about Freefile: you either need to know numbers from your previous year’s return or else you still need to mail in a little authorization form via the mail.

Personally, I still prefer doing my taxes using pen and paper. However, my return took three weeks longer than my girlfriend’s to come in.