Breaking Free
Experiments in tech entrepreneurship
TurboTax Alternatives
In: Productivity|Wealth By: Brian Armstrong
13 Apr 2010Update: Yes, I’m aware that ads for TurboTax are showing up on this article occasionally, and I think it’s awesome :)
Tax time is definitely a pain.
The U.S. tax code is a lengthy document (over 50,000 pages at last count) that few people can really understand (including our current Secretary Of The Treasury which is somewhat frightening).
It’s riddled with puzzling (and at times hilarious) questions such as these gems which I encountered over the weekend:
Did you rent a farm and receive part of the crop instead of cash for the rent?
Why yes I did! I’m sure glad someone at the IRS thought to include this question otherwise I might have missed it. And this one:
Enter the amount of any gambling losses, but only to the extent of gambling winnings. It is important to keep an accurate diary or similar record of your gambling winnings and losses.
Umm….ok, nice to see the government giving gambling advice.
But I guess I can’t get too upset at the government acting very…well, government like. They don’t know any better.
But a private company…well that’s another story. And this is what I always found especially infuriating about Intuit’s TurboTax product. It’s not just that it’s a bad piece of software – it’s that it’s bad yet so darn successful!
- It gets TONS of negative reviews on Amazon.com, but since there are over 40 different versions listed (they put up new ones each year) their bad reviews keep getting pushed down.
- It has “designed obsolescence” – which means they went out of their way to break it every year so you’d have to buy it again.
- It’s user interface looks like it was designed by programmers and accountants instead of normal people.
This is why I was so excited to see someone finally come along and clean TurboTax’s clock.
The last two years I’ve used TaxACT.com and it is a breath of fresh air. It is fast, clean, simple, and makes sense out of incomprehensible IRS documents (perhaps their most impressive feat).
By the way, I’m not getting paid to recommend them. They are just that awesome that I wanted to tell people about it.
Best of all, it is way cheaper than TurboTax. Filing your federal return is FREE. If you want to do a state return it’s just $9.95.
Overall, I’m so impressed with these guys – they nailed a great freemium product, probably put up with TONS of hassle getting it to work with the IRS, and have a product that really beats the pants off TurboTax.
Even if you have been using TurboTax for YEARS, it’s time to BREAK the addiction, stop paying your money to Intuit each year for their inferior product, and make the switch to TaxACT.com.
Until next time, keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong
P.S. Doing your taxes is way easier if you’ve been doing your financial statements each month!
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Breaking Free is a collection of articles on tech entrepreneurship, business, and life written by Brian Armstrong. You can read more here »
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Chuck Cohn
April 13th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
The TaxACT logo and the ACT, Inc logo (as in the standardized college entrance exam) are exactly the same! Check it out:
http://www.actstudent.org/
http://www.taxact.com/
I haven’t used TurboTax but Quickbooks is pretty hard to use so I’m not surprised that it’s really cumbersome.
I use an accountant for my taxes – I don’t think I could figure out my taxes even with a good software program. I’m impressed that you can do everything yourself – consistent with what you preach on this site.
Brian Armstrong
April 14th, 2010 at 5:39 am
Wow, nice catch on the similar logos!
Yep, when I had UT incorporated and everything it was too complicated and I had to hire an accountant too. But now that I switched it to sole proprietorship it’s not too bad. Still I could be making mistakes….it’s probably safer to have an accountant do it if you want to be sure to keep the IRS off your back! :)
Enigmascape
January 20th, 2011 at 5:39 am
lol, I was just so pissed off at turbo tax after going through the whole process and in the end they wanted something like $76! What a rip! Anyway, I even thought the turbo tax ad was funny enough that I just had to SEE it for myself, hahaha, you are welcome:)
T-Crew Tutors
February 17th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
As a business, TurboTax makes accounting and doing all my taxes significantly easier. I have used a few alternatives for my personal taxes, and find them to be just as good as turbotax. Some will even let you file for free. In the end though, I usually end up sticking with TT because it is what I am most familiar with.
Pascal
April 17th, 2011 at 1:12 am
The problem with Turbotax is that when I first started with them a good number of years ago it used to cost maybe $50 or $80 and every year the fees get a little steeper… Now this year from me they wanted $140 and it’s just too much, every year it’s a little more I am expected to swallow and I can’t take it anymore, their fees this year is as high as dang H&R Block and that tells me this company has grown to that size certain companies get to, they are very good at what they do but they lose sight of what got them there and instead of continuing to offer great value they simply keep raising the price as if to say we no longer need you.
Well, so be it then.
Joe C
June 1st, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Tried TaxACT (desktop version), and it had a bug — didn’t print page 2 of form 8606 when I printed a copy of my filing for my records. Tech support said page 2 of form 8606 doesn’t print when sections III and IV are blank. This obviously leads to problems when (as in my case) section II (which starts on page 1 but finishes on page 2) is non-blank.
They did eventually give me a workaround (instructions on how to print that page separately), but it took them four days and six e-mails to get me usable info.
Your blog headline was “Turbo Tax Alternatives” (plural). Got any ideas other than TaxACT?