While searching for help on a vexing programming problem I was having earlier today, Yahoo threw me an ad for Intuit’s TurboTax online service, promising to let me file my taxes for free. I knew the hook of these services - your federal taxes are free, but they’ll charge you a fee to transfer over your data and file your state taxes - but, since I was already at that point ready for a distraction from my programming problem at that point, I took the bait and clicked the ad.
It must be said that I hate doing my taxes. Not so much to see how much the government has leeched out of me - though of course that blows too - but because it involves getting together papers from one place and papers from another place and putting them all together and copying numbers from one piece of paper to another… Paperwork. Empty formality. It’s not my style.
So I played around with TurboTax, seeing if it would be a better experience than filling out a 1024ASDF form. At the end, I’d have to say that it was, and that I was generally satisfied with the experience.
TurboTax works through a series of screens with various questions, most of which accept a yes or no answer. You’ll also have to copy over values from your W2 and other such forms, but the system does all the math for you. The system will ask you questions about your situation first and only ask you for your name, address and such near the end, which I think is an interesting choice psychologically… Thinking about it, I probably would have been more dissuaded to try the service if it asked me for those things up front.
I started out filling forms on the free plan, but, of course, eventually I got the pitch for an upsell. Would I like to use the “Basic Plus” plan for an extra $15 and have it maximize my deductions or some such language? At this point, I still hadn’t given Intuit my credit card number, so I accepted the offer to see if it would suggest anything I missed. Indeed, it did - specifically, the interest I paid on my student loan (which I finally paid off just a couple weeks ago) was deductible, something I didn’t know I could deduct for the past three tax years I’ve had since graduating. Damn! I was also able to deduct the tuition I paid for the classes I took at the local community college, something else I wouldn’t have considered. In the end, my tax burden was lowered by a couple dozen dollars - enough for the premium service to pay for itself, if not spectacularly.
And then there was the pitch I knew was coming - file your state taxes too for $35. Okay, fine. You’ve got a deal.
In the end, it turns out I wasn’t able to file electronically, because apparently they need some security number that was on my 2007 return statement or something like that - I don’t know, exactly. Just that it involved paperwork. So instead TurboTax created a multi-page PDF of the various tax forms with values already filled in, ready to print out and mail along with my federal and state ransoms (no return for me).
In the end, I paid $50 for something I could have done for free - for free, and not enjoyed it one bit. And I know for sure that TurboTax’s suggestions for deductions saved me a few bucks - not quite $50, but the resultant decreased tax fee plus the reduced stress of not having to do the paperwork manually makes me believe I got my money’s worth. I’ll definitely look to use this tool next year, and for those still procrastinating on their taxes, I’d recommend giving TurboTax a look, especially if you hate paperwork too.
Now if you all would have just voted for Huckabee in ‘08, maybe 2009 would have been the year of the FairTax and all this stupid paperwork would be just a bad memory…
