Intuit (Turbo Tax) and H&R Block are the main lobby against easy tax prep (spent millions per year), then the other 12 members of the ACTR are:
Tax Act
OnLine Taxes
Wolters Kluwer
Tax Hawk
Liberty Tax
Drake Software
Jackson Hewitt
also the following financial institutions:
Netspend
Republic Bank
TPG Santa Barbara
pathward
So who do you use that is not one of the 14 companies above (or owned/operated by them)?
Info about their lobbying actions: https://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby-heavily-against-simple-filing/
Outside of tax preparers themselves, the industry is reinforced in its opposition to return-free filing by various trade and advocacy groups. One of these is the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights (ACTR), an organization composed of various tax preparers and makers of tax software. In addition to Intuit, H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, their membership includes TaxAct, TaxSlayer, Liberty Tax Services and more. It’s a relatively new group, but in the only two years it’s existed the ACTR has poured almost $450,000 into the tax lobby, including six mentions of opposing “simple-filing” in their disclosures.
So far from this old reddit mega-thread:
the most recommended over the services above is FreeTaxUSA
also there’s this tip in the comments:
My tip: turbo tax only charges you at the very end when you go to actually file. So what I do is do my tax paperwork at both turbo tax and freetaxusa then compare the final return (or due) amount between the two. Every couple years, there’s a hundred or so dollar difference between the two and I dig in to find the difference before submitting and paying for ONLY freetaxusa
Edit: Credit Karma was another recommendation, but they are owned by Intuit since 2020:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Karma
Edit 2: Another article on industry lobbying
Online or not, if they are a tax prep company, they have a strong financial incentive to stop tax prep from being free.
This doesn’t answer your question, but I will take this time to rant about Jackson Hewitt. I’ve never used them, but I had an 18 year old employee making a little over minimum wage that used them about 20 years ago. His taxes were simple and just, at the time, a 1040EZ. It’s a simple one page document that takes about 1 minute to fill out. He didn’t owe any federal tax, so he should have received back all that he had paid in that year. Jackson Hewitt took all of his refund plus about $200. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the places you listed are just as scummy.
I’ve always done my own taxes except when I had to withdraw from my 401k for a large hospital bill. I went to a local independent tax preparer that charged me $100, but she had a special code that saved me several thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties for early withdrawal from 401k. There was no way that I could have done that on my own. The IRS gives accountants special “powers” that make them necessary. The fact that an entire industry is built around just figuring out how much taxes you owe is a travesty.
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