Please be positive and upbeat in your interactions, and avoid making negative or pessimistic comments. Instead, focus on the potential opportunities.
- Manlobbi
Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) ❤
No. of Recommendations: 3
I did my Fed taxes, used the Free Fillable Forms option on the IRS site. Sent them in at 1pm, got confirmation back around 3pm that filing was accepted and processed. Only slow part will be the refund comes via snail mail, but no biggee, I wanted to get it in before Musk guts the IRS.
2 whole hours it took, such awful inefficiency !! /sarcasm
No. of Recommendations: 2
2 whole hours it took, such awful inefficiency !! /sarcasm
Lucky you. It takes me at least 8 hours of battling with the awful TaxAct software, due to capital gains and various involuntary stock sales from several different accounts in Fidelity and E*TRADE that are outside of my 401k. On the plus side, such complexity must mean I'm pretty rich! 😊
No. of Recommendations: 1
"It takes me at least 8 hours of battling with the awful TaxAct software, due to capital gain"
I had a Sch-B, Sch-D, and the 1040 to fill out. Luckily, my Cap Gains that I had calculated
matched up with how my broker compiled the 1099-B that gets sent to me and the IRS, so it was
super easy to fill out the Sch-D. Also had to manually calculate how much the tax was
going to be on the cap gains and qualified divs, I used the step by step page in the
paper instruction book for that. So there is definitely some thinking to do, not just
plugging in numbers.
The only part I didn't like was that I had to manually input 3 1099's, there was no
way to download and attach a copy of each. Since I used the exact numbers on the
1099's, and these were sent to the IRS, it would have been nice if I could have just
had an option to click a box stating I just used the exact numbers that they already
had a copy of.
Buy other than that, it sure beat doing them by hand and mailing it in. By far the quickest
I've ever had taxes completed. And it's free !
No. of Recommendations: 0
So you had a 1099-B and doing your return was still free? I'll have to look into this if it still exists as an option next year.
No. of Recommendations: 1
"So you had a 1099-B and doing your return was still free? I'll have to look into this if it still exists as an option next year."
This is not guided tax prep. You have to know what forms to fill out, and how to
fill them out. But it is free, and obviously the IRS processes the returns sent in
electronically ahead of mail in returns. The guided tax prep offered by the IRS is only
for lower incomes, I forget the number, but definitely did not qualify to use. I have
never used any of the tax prep software like TurboTax, have always just slogged thru it
by going line by line thru the instruction book. It's not hard, but it is a pain in the
butt, so the Free Fillable Form filing was definitely an improvement over the pen and paper
method I was using.
No. of Recommendations: 2
So you had a 1099-B and doing your return was still free? I'll have to look into this if it still exists as an option next year.
I think it will be available, but the free tax filing by going into the IRS office and they help you fill it out looks like it's being eliminated. VITA uses Taxslayer software and free sites online use it too. That software is evidently a partnership with 9 tax preparer sites, so it covers a lot, including things that are out of scope for VITA. For instance VITA doesn't do Estimated Tax Penalties, but the software VITA uses us built to handle it. Go figure.
