Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire File your taxes for free?

There's a push for making the IRS provide a system for everyone to file their taxes for free, without having to buy software or hire it done. I've been an advocate of that for years. There's no reason that our tax system should be so complicated that we have to pay someone to figure it out. Needless to say, tax preparation companies like Turbotax, H&R Block, and others would go out of business.
On the other hand, this would be run by the IRS and I can't see anything good coming out of that. The federal government has always demonstrated that they're the very worse managers of any known system of anything.

FREE TAX PREPARATION

at least a taxpreperer may help you find you some more tax refunds ... IRS will be only for you paying more tax , not helping you

freefilefillableforms.com has worked just fine for me. It’s free and I suppose operated by the IRS.

The majority of Americans are helpless doing tax prep. They try to read the forms and it's hopeless. It's way too complicated for most of us.

If you earn over a certain amount (which is not that much) you have to pay.

yep when single .EZ form was great ..once got married and got mortgage and other exemptions and things ,it not work .have to get a tax preperer .

A retired married couple, each having a blue collar government pension with NO investments like 401 alphabet funds or anything would NOT get e-file for free...

Free fillable forms lets you fill out and submit forms, but you have to know where to report whatever type of income you're reporting by finding and using the right form. What they're talking about is letting everyone use 3rd party vendor software, like H&R Block or TurboTax, that walks you through your income and puts it on the right form for you. It sort of reviews your information and looks for obvious mistakes, but it's only as good as the numbers you give it. You get your refund, if any, a little faster because it's already been theoretically vetted.

NATIONAL SALES TAX...end all the IRS BS, stop losing out on "BlackMarket" income going untaxed...and ENCOURAGE SAVINGS, BARTER ECONOMY, and PERSONAL RELIANCE...oh yeah, Government hates that fundamentalist philosophy.

I haven't heard anything about the flat tax in a long time.

My wife and I filed our taxes yesterday. Some years we pay to have it done and some years we do it ourselves. We did it ourselves this year using TurboTax. It’s a hassle for us and takes between 1-1.5 hrs of our time.

Our taxes are fairly straightforward. Two jobs, kids, two mortgages, HSA’s, employer sponsored 401k’s. No rental properties or other complicated tax deductions.

That’s one hell of a mortgage and deductible expenses to go over 25,900.

Freetaxusa.com

But if you’re still looking for tax assistance today, you better figure it out quickly!

I always did my own taxes. Every year I would get the instruction book for the 1040, schedule A, schedule C, and when needed schedule D. I would read what changed and then spend a couple long days getting it all done. Because I disliked doing it I always waited to the last few days. About 4 years ago I decided to try turbo tax. It was so easy and they even do the state taxes in the end. I spend $150 to 200 but for me it is worth it and they have saved me money actually because the software is better at finding money saving deductions. What used to take 2 plus long days is now done in 2 1/2 hours of just answering questions. On the deduction side they show what I took last year to compare. On the income side I can actually download 1099s from my financial institutions. So easy and worth the cost. They even print out quarterly tax payment vouchers too and do the homestead declaration for state.

We're retired and don't have a mortgage so the standard deduction works for us. The free online Turbotax version can do it all in under 30 min. Mostly it's just typing in 1099 info. For the last couple years they've included the state taxes for free, too.

turbotax ias free for Veterans. I've used it the last few years and its worked great.

I've used TurboTax for years. Even with kids, a mortgage, and itemized deductions it isn't hard. Nor expensive. Some people are intimidated, but in reality you just plug in numbers from the documents you receive. Most people don't need anything else.

The year I retired my employer owed me another 4 months pay so for 4 months I continued to get my same monthly pay + retirement pay. It meant about $4000 in Federal taxes the next April. That is the only time I paid someone to do mine. Was hoping a pro could find something I'd left out to reduce that amount. It cost me $200, and the way he figured it resulted in me paying $50ish more than the way I figured it.

I have been using H&R Block software for years. I wait until they have a rebate and then get it. Normally costs me less than $40. I could probably do my taxes without the software by simply downloading the forms but using the software gives you some protection from audits. But I do agree with the premise of the OP, since they force us to do taxes then we should not have to pay to do it. Of course they could solve all this if they went to a flat tax with no loopholes, deductions or exemptions. You make X amount then you owe X percentage of that amount. Period.

My company prepared my taxes (via Deloitte) from 2005 through 2020 (five years after I retired). When 2021 came we had a CPA do them and just had her do 2022. They can be rather simple or extremely complicated depending upon one's situation.

They’d contract it out then raise our taxes