I’ve been an avid fan of Turbo Tax for the past 10 years. Year after year, I’ve filed my federal and state taxes for free using their website. This year, all of the sudden they tried to charge me $79.99. I almost fell for it, and I don’t want you to.
*FULL DISCLAIMER* I am not an accountant, tax expert, finance guru or anything of the sort. If you have any complicated tax situations, such as running your own business, I recommend speaking to an expert if you need help. I am simply trying to help those who have 1 or 2 W2 forms, some student loans, maybe own a house. I cannot advise you on situations much more complicated than that.
If you are NOT self-employed, and just need to file taxes using your W2, I highly recommend Turbo Tax. It makes it extremely easy to file your own taxes. I learned how when I was 16. Teaching yourself how to do your own taxes will not only save you $$$, but can also help you hold yourself more accountable (no pun intended) to your financial situation. I like walking myself through the process so that I can understand where my tax breaks come from.
If you purchase a home, get married, change your name, graduate from college, etc – it is still very easy to file on Turbo Tax. I filed jointly with my husband for the first time last year after getting married in 2017, and was a little apprehensive about using Turbo Tax, but it went completely fine.
At the end of filing, it also gives you a great snapshot of your financial life. It tells you your debt, debt to income ratio, credit score, and a breakdown of how your credit score is determined. Very important stuff to know.
So What Changed This Year on Turbo Tax?
- Student Loan Interest Tax Break
Everything for me started off the same as previous years until I put in my information from my 1098-E, which is the document you’ll receive if you pay over $600 in student loan interest throughout the year. Most likely if you have student loans, you’ll need this document. If you didn’t get it in the mail, it should be available on your student loan lenders website.
Turbo Tax showed me a nice tax break from interest paid on student loans – but then popped up stating that in order to claim this break, I would need to upgrade to Deluxe for $39.99. Of course trusting Turbo Tax over the years, I figured it must be true. Fine, I’ll pay $39.99 in order to get the tax break. Well worth it, right?
- Filing State Taxes
So I got through the federal portion and was on to state. When I got to the very end, now it is telling me I had to pay an additional $39.99 in order to file my state taxes. I have never paid this before on Turbo Tax. It has always been completely free. Still, though, I trust the website and I’m still saving a bunch as opposed to paying someone else to do my taxes. I almost went through with it until it told us we needed something from last year’s file, and that we weren’t logged on to the same account we used last year. So we had to switch to my husband’s account and start all over.
TIP: Make sure you’re using the same account year after year. It saves a lot of your information and makes it SO much faster to file.
How I Filed Federal and State for Free
This time, on my husband’s account, we decided to call TurboTax out on their BS. We googled it, and sure enough they advertise that it is free to file. So when we got to my student loan interest, we elected to pass on the Deluxe package, even though it alerted us that we wouldn’t be able to get our tax break if we didn’t upgrade. What happened? We still got the exact same tax break and didn’t have to pay for the upgrade.
We did the same thing with State taxes – when it came time to file them, we simply clicked the skip button when it tried to sell us the upgraded package. It continued to let us file State free of charge.
In conclusion, I still highly recommend Turbo Tax – but don’t fall for their upgraded packages unless you know you need them. Just skip over them and it will still let you get your tax break for student loan interest paid, and file state for free.