The Best Tax Software According to Reddit

A vivid topic

Filing taxes is something that nobody above the age of 18 and earning an income can avoid, so it’s not surprising that there are multiple threads regarding taxing in general. In fact, if you search for tax filing specifically, there is a huge chance that you’ll come across a megathread in which taxpayers discuss their individual experiences with different tax filing methods that they used previously or in a specific tax year. Granted, it’s a challenge to go through all these comments but these seemingly never-ending discussions are by far the best threads on Reddit to learn about different opinions on the market’s best-known online tax prep solutions as well find out about more obscure methods that most people are unaware of.

Another advantage of these threads is that Redditors are always honest and although they praise these solutions for making tax preparation less tedious, when they find something to be a negative then it’ll be addressed to the whole wide world without remorse. Also, Reddit opens the gates for honesty from tax company employees, too, resulting in comments that, quite funnily, won’t discourage users from trying out competing solutions at all.

When giants get the stink eye

Redditors have no problems with tax software in general but when it comes to the solutions provided by bigger tax companies their comments reveal that these users consider such programs to be double-edged swords, particularly when it comes to prices. A good example of this two-sided nature is TaxAct, which used to be praised for its cost-friendliness but since the 2017 edition has been bashed for its sudden increase in price. The same is also true for TurboTax: nobody questions the program’s ease of use and accuracy, but its expensive base prices and Intuit’s apparent behavior of blocking the IRS from making a free, competing solution have turned many users down from using TurboTax ever again.

Speaking of free solutions, a reoccurring complaint from Redditors is that the best-known tax companies do have free tax prepping solutions – with which filing federal and state taxes is free for households earning less than $66,000 a year – but that these are never advertise on their own websites and instead only on a dedicated page provided by the IRS.

Free solutions above everything

Although there are various ways with which the prices of online tax prep solutions can be reduced to a minimum – or even down to zero – it’s understandable that one of the biggest reasons certain Redditors aren’t fond of turning to tax programs is their costs. As such, many commenters often suggest fellow taxpayers exploit the ability to pay after filing through online programs, using them to just calculate the taxes to be paid and then enter the information into the relevant forms manually via IRS’s free tool.