digital art quizzes freetaxusa 2022
By Kathy Yakal Kathy Yakal Contributor My Experience I write about money. I’ve been reviewing tax software and services as a freelancer for since 1993. Along the way, I took on reviews of other types of business and personal finance technology. Prior to that, I had spent a few years writing about productivity and entertainment applications for 8-bit personal computers (my first one was a Commodore VIC-20) as a member of the editorial staff at Compute! Read Full Bio
FreeTaxUSA is a robust online personal tax preparation service that lets you e-file federal tax returns—including Schedule C—for free. State filing and advanced support cost extra, though not much.
Editors select and review products independently. If you buy through affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.
Here's How To Get A Faster Tax Refund In 2023
If your budget is tight, FreeTaxUSA should be a top contender when you're choosing a tax preparation service. You can use it to file your federal taxes for free, and it supports all major IRS forms and schedules. State returns cost only $14.99. It's fast, easy to use, and provides more help than we would expect from a free product that covers so much ground. It doesn't offer the most elegant interface, but we didn't encounter any problems or navigation confusion.
FreeTaxUSA, which is owned by TaxHawk, is an especially good bargain if you have to file as self-employed. Many taxpayers have taken on side gigs in this changing economy, and the best tax preparation services charge hefty fees if you have to file Schedule C. This is true of our two Editors’ Choice winners, H&R Block and TurboTax. They’re the most expensive tax sites in this group but also the best by far.
Since 1982, has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions.Read our editorial mission(Opens in a new window) & see how we test(Opens in a new window) .
Ibr And State Taxes
As the name implies, FreeTaxUSA is free, but only for filing federal returns. To add a state return, it's $14.99. Optionally, you can get advanced support with the Deluxe add-on ($7.99). Deluxe includes priority access to support agents, live chat, and audit assistance (step-by-step instructions), plus unlimited amended returns. It doesn't include answers to questions you may have about preparing your taxes. For that, you have to pay an additional $34.99 ($10 more than last year's price, but still a good deal). Then you can ask your tax questions by phone, chat, or screen share.
Cash App Taxes has always been free, with no additional charges for state returns. It does not offer professional guidance, however, and has limited site-based help. TaxSlayer Classic, which supports Schedule C and related tax topics for the self-employed, is $19.95 for federal and $39.95 for state.
By comparison, the traditional leaders in the field charge quite a bit more. For taxpayers who have any self-employment income, Intuit TurboTax is the most expensive. The early discount price is $89, and the current list price is $119. Many tax prep websites offer discounts early in the tax season and hike their prices as the filing deadline approaches. Add to that another $39 to file a state return now, $54 if you wait. H&R Block, which has not yet finalized its prices for the 2022 tax year, charged slightly less than TurboTax last year for its self-employed version.
Freetaxusa Review: Cheap Alternative To Turbotax And H&r Block?
As an authorized IRS e-file provider, FreeTaxUSA says it meets or exceeds the security requirements outlined by the IRS. Since the site uses SSL certificates, your connection is encrypted, and sensitive information should be safe. The company also complies with rigorous data security standards to protect against theft of your payment information. Privacy practices are reviewed annually.
FreeTaxUSA allows you to set up multi-factor authentication. If you sign in on an unrecognized device, you have to answer security questions you set up when you created your account. If you've forgotten them, you can use email or phone verification. The site offers a Remember Me option, but you should only check that box if there's no chance anyone else can gain access to your computer.
Regardless of price, all the tax prep services we review work similarly—for the most part. They provide an alternative to manually entering numbers and other data in the tiny boxes on the IRS Form 1040 and all the other forms and schedules. Instead, online tax prep services do the same thing tax professionals do when you sit in their offices. They present you with questions about your tax-related finances. Then they take your answers, do all necessary calculations, and generate the finished product—your tax return on official IRS tax forms, ready to approve and file.
How To Get Free Tax Filing 2022
All the services we test rely on step-by-step wizards that walk you through the tax topics that apply to you. The questions and statements are mostly written in plain, understandable language, and you supply answers by checking boxes, choosing an answer from a list, or entering data. Supplemental help is always available via email and sometimes online chat, phone, or even through video screen sharing. When you come to the end of the process, most services make a careful pass through your return to look for errors and omissions. They also transfer the applicable data to any state return you must submit and help you print or electronically file your approved returns.
FreeTaxUSA begins with a good introduction that explains its navigation tools and support options. A quick but optional tour is worth taking, though if you skip it, the website is designed well enough to be intuitive to use. While I've occasionally been tripped up by confusing or malfunctioning navigation on some tax prep services, it never happened when I was testing FreeTaxUSA.
A horizontal toolbar across the top divides the site into logical groupings that follow the path of the 1040 form: Personal, Income, Deductions/Credits, Misc, Summary, State, and Filing. Submenus under each section show a comprehensive list of that section's topics, with check marks next to those you've completed. Clicking on one takes you to the corresponding section, making it easy to revisit any specific topic.
Vizio Smartcast E55 D0 Hd Tv Review: A Solid Hd Tv That's Priced To Sell
When collecting information from you, some tax prep sites, like Jackson Hewitt, break down hard questions into smaller ones, and then only ask you one question per page. Others display so many questions on a page you have to scroll quite a bit to get to everything. Most tax prep services do a combination of both at some point, and FreeTaxUSA is no exception.
Like its competitors, FreeTaxUSA wants you to finish required fields accurately before advancing to the next questions. For example, when I entered the same Social Security number for both a taxpayer and their spouse, FreeTaxUSA prevented me from moving on. A Fix This link appeared at the top and took me directly to the field that needed correcting. It's a helpful tool, and one not handled as skillfully by every online tax filing service.
FreeTaxUSA incorporates some of the best tax preparation conventions I've seen on tax prep services over the years. However, some services, such as H&R Block, have gotten rid of these features in favor of a cleaner and less busy design. This is not a criticism of FreeTaxUSA. In fact, it's a compliment. Sometimes it's worthwhile to offer taxpayers multiple paths to the same information and to show them every available tool on every page.
Swift Moves To Next Phase Of Cbdc Testing After Positive Results
For example, there are a few useful icons at the top of the page, which many other services don't include. You can bookmark a page to remind yourself you need to attend to something there before you complete your return. You can also open a comprehensive list of tax topics covered by the site and jump to one by clicking on it (if you've visited that area already). Another icon, which is unique to FreeTaxUSA, links to an audit trail feature, which shows a history of all your actions on the site. Selecting any of these entries opens the corresponding page.
Buttons at the bottom move you back one page or advance you to the next. The right vertical pane contains multiple help links—more on help topics later.
The first substantive thing you do with any new tax service—unless you're importing a PDF of your previous year's return from a competing product, which FreeTaxUSA and competitors like TaxSlayer allow—is provide your personal details. They include name, address, Social Security number, filing status, and dependents. If you filed for the previous year using FreeTaxUSA, your data automatically populates.
Irs Expands Digital Asset Question On Draft Version Of 2022 Form 1040
The site has more questions before it allows you to start entering tax numbers. You have to select your filing status and provide information about your spouse if you have one. Then it asks about dependents. Once you complete that section, FreeTaxUSA shows you a summary of what you entered in case anything needs editing. Then you move along to the Income section.
The most common tax form is the W-2 that employees receive from employers. It's the first tax topic that FreeTaxUSA tackles. It's very simple. You see a form containing all the fields on the W-2. Some information carries over from the Taxpayer Information
