Intuit Turbo Tax Reviews

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HR Block is also an Editors' Choice winner, with better contextualized help than TurboTax, though TurboTax has the best overall experience for filing taxes. If you're looking to spend less, we recommend FreeTaxUSA, our Editors' Choice for the best free service for federal filing (state filing costs just $14.99).

TurboTax has new, higher pricing this year, and overall it costs more than other online tax prep services. Instead of offering four DIY products as it has in the past, there are three. Investment sales and rental property have been moved up to the highest tier, and the prices for the paid products have gone up by $10.

The Free Edition (federal and state) is for taxpayers claiming the standard deduction with no more than these specific tax situations: W-2 income, limited interest and dividend income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and the student loan interest deduction.

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TurboTax originated the wizard-based approach to tax preparation. This tool takes you through a lengthy series of pages, one at a time, in a logical order. You answer the questions asked by entering data, clicking buttons, and selecting from options. You can also import data directly from some forms, such as W-2s and 1099s (if your employer or financial institutions are TurboTax Import Partners). Or you can type in the data yourself. In some cases, you may be able to upload a form from your computer or snap a picture of it. Investment transaction imports are especially flexible. You can import up to 10,000 stock trades and 20,000 cryptocurrency transactions from more financial sources than any competitors allow.

TurboTax alternates between walking you through a Q&A and showing you lists of available tax topics. After you complete the federal section, it transfers data to any state returns you must file, combs through your return, lets you fix any problems, asks you to pay, and helps you file or print the finished product. The process works beautifully, saving time, easing frustration, and dramatically reducing errors.

If you filed your income taxes using TurboTax or another online tax prep app last year, you can import key data from your previous tax return to save time. TurboTax walks new users through the setup process, requesting information like contact details, Social Security numbers, and dependents. The setup is slightly more consolidated than before. It then moves you through income, deductions and credits, and miscellaneous tax issues.

As mentioned, you can get human help if you pay for TurboTax Live Assisted. And if you pay even more for TurboTax Live Full Service, Intuit's tax professionals will fully prepare and file your return for you.

TurboTax Premium accommodates sole proprietors who file a Form 1040 and a Schedule C. Its target market includes small businesses of many types, including gig workers who are, for example, marketplace sellers, Uber drivers, or delivery people. This section of TurboTax starts by asking for your profession and posing standard small business questions, which other tax prep services, like TaxSlayer, do too.

Here's a DIY tax first that no other service has tried: If you do online banking, you can connect your financial institutions with TurboTax to import transactions and allow TurboTax to categorize them (for only one line of work). This is an ambitious endeavor, and I experienced mixed results in testing.

You can also enter your individual expenses manually or just enter a total later. TurboTax highlights expenses most common in your industry and looks for ones you might have missed. It selects the categories most commonly reported for your profession, like vehicle expenses, home office, and office supplies, but you can choose additional ones.

I write about money. I\u2019ve been reviewing tax software and services as a freelancer for PCMag 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!\u00a0

After working at Lawson Associates, now Lawson Software, I switched my focus to accounting but learned that personal computer applications were more progressive and interesting to cover than mainframe solutions. So I served as editor of a monthly newsletter that provided support for accountants who were just starting to use PCs. I still ghostwrite monthly how-to columns for accounting professionals. From there, I went on to write articles and reviews for numerous business and financial publications, including Barron\u2019s and Kiplinger\u2019s Personal Finance Magazine.

Intuit's TurboTax has a history of excellence that goes back more than 30 years. The company packs a lot of substance and style into its products, with thorough coverage of tax topics in an easy-to-follow interview format with top-notch support. For many years, TurboTax has come out on top of our reviews of the best personal tax preparation services. This year, Intuit has added an AI-powered tool called Intuit Assist to make the experience of preparing your taxes even smarter. Other areas of TurboTax have been streamlined, simplifying setup and data entry for filling out your Schedule C. All of TurboTax's products are now available in Spanish as well. Despite being pricier than much of the competition, TurboTax offers more than enough to earn it our Editors\u2019 Choice award.

TurboTax has new, higher pricing this year, and overall it costs more than other online tax prep services. Instead of offering four DIY products as it has in the past, there are three. Investment sales and rental property have been moved up to the highest tier, and the prices for the paid products have gone up by $10.\u00a0

The Free Edition (federal and state) is for taxpayers claiming the standard deduction with no more than these specific tax situations: W-2 income, limited interest and dividend income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and the student loan interest deduction.\u00a0

Whenever you are entering personal information, such as your Social Security number and birth date, into a website, you should always take additional safety precautions, such as using a trusted network\u2014your own home Wi-Fi, for example.

TurboTax alternates between walking you through a Q&A and showing you lists of available tax topics. After you complete the federal section, it transfers data to any state returns you must file, combs through your return, lets you fix any problems, asks you to pay, and helps you file or print the finished product. The process works beautifully, saving time, easing frustration, and dramatically reducing errors.\u00a0

TurboTax feels like one long conversation, not just a collection of pages. It uses clear, understandable, and lively language. It\u2019s proactive, explaining financial concepts as it introduces them and giving you links\u2014sometimes several\u2014on the interview pages. These links open context-sensitive articles and how-tos, usually in a right-side vertical pane where you also find direct links to topic pages when appropriate.\u00a0

The help pane contains two other types of guidance. First, you can search for words and phrases, as you\u2019ve always been able to, while the help tool returns multiple links to help articles and related pages on the site. The second, Intuit Assist, works like an AI-driven version of the old TurboTax Assistant. It often returns the same thing as the search tool, only it \u201cconverses\u201d with you so you can ask follow-up questions.\u00a0And it leans, which the more traditional guidance doesn\u2019t.

In testing, when Intuit Assist didn\u2019t have an answer to my exact question, it changed the question slightly. This didn\u2019t always give me the answer I needed, but at least the AI picked up on some of the keywords. Most of the time, I got a simple explanation and links to related help content, some of which came from TurboTax community forum pages, not Intuit employees. Both of Intuit\u2019s help tools seem to respond better to shorter queries.

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