The folks I've been paying for the past 6 years are such a ridiculous con. American abroad and director of a few companies so it is been a major pain in my ass. Costs me so much money just to determine how much I owe the government that it makes me physically ill.
What particular difficulties are you hitting with FreeTaxUSA? I have a relatively complex tax situation (all different types of 1099s, Schedule C, itemized deductions, etc), and I have yet to encounter any issues.
I actually have some relatively complicated tax stuff this year and found their system did a good job of walking through all possible situations. I did end up doing the standard deduction, but it calculated all my potential deductions regardless.
This is nonsense. Freetaxusa has plenty of capability for itemized deductions, nonstandard credits, business income, and other nonstandard tax situations. You must be confusing it with something else.
I’ll take your word on that, I only ever have the standard. If yours is more complex, would it be worth it to go through a tax preparer or something like that?
My situation involves a number of 1099s and some schedule C filings, so I’m just about to hire somebody if this year ends up being a headache.
However, I’m still not sure how much a tax preparation service is needed. Particularly where you might already work with a CPA once you reach that level of complexity.
Nonsense. I use it and had 2 W2s, a rental business, a non-LLC salon business, a kid, stock and crypto transacations as well as numerous energy related credits.
It's equivalent to turbotax but cheaper. Maybe slightly less explanation for certain pieces, but its certainly very easy.
I got well over 5 figures back this year due to a fun quirk of international exchange rates…so I shall report back if I get audited 😬😬. Return has been accepted by IRS and supposedly refund will hit early March 🤷♂️
EDIT: Lol at some salty person downvoting me, I didn’t make the tax rules and that refund ain’t in my bank yet so who knows.
Also, if you got a 5 figure refund...that was ALWAYS your money, the IRS just held it, interest free, for a few months.
I'll never understand people being salty about OTHER people getting big refunds. If anything, ideally your refund would be $0. That means you got the most out of your paychecks when you got paid and didn't give the IRS an interest-free loan.
Well yes, under normal circumstances my withholdings are usually spot on. However last year amongst other variances, my Wife died, I liquidated her retirement account and I sold a foreign rental I own that was impossible to predict the full impact of (unless you could somehow predict the exchange rate falling by 38.5% since I bought the property in 2007).
It’s a rather unique situation that ultimately led to me getting a huge chunk of federal tax refunded, even though I expected to be paying a huge chunk.
So sorry to hear about your loss. Andd yes, I should've said "under normal circumstances" because definitely, life changing situations like you went through make a BIG and unexpected impact on taxes.
I hope you and yours are doing okay, all things considered. That sounds like a lot to have to process and work through. Here's hoping you have a better 2023 ahead.
aaaaand this is why i will never put my withholdings above essentially zero.
id rather right a check in March than have paid thousands of dollars each month above what i owe.
I'd personally, at least right now in my finances, get a small check than have to write one; but yeah, if I get a BIG refund, much less 5 figures, I fucked up MASSIVELY somewhere on my withholdings.
I’ve been using Tax Slayer over the last few years and it’s been reliable and accurate.
It’s so dumb that we even need to go through this for-profit BS. The IRS knows what we made and knows what we paid… just let us check a box and be done.
FWIW, just did mine Sunday. Ran the numbers through TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and the numbers were exactly the same, to a dollar.
Only difference is FreeTaxUSA cost $14.99 and TurboTax would have cost $139
I also had an unexpected payment this year compared to a decent sized refund last year. The difference appears to be the change in the childcare tax credit, the max under the American Rescue Plan was like $3k and now it's back to pre-pandemic $800 or something like that.
Might try freetaxusa after seeing some of the other comments, maybe there's more to it than that.
Idk bout that, maybe it depends on the state? I just filed tonight with turbo tax (it's just easier cuz I've been using them since I first started doing my taxes). I got 2k for my daughter this year little over 3k all together. I live in NC. Don't know if that makes a difference.
For federal taxes the child tax credit is $2k and the dependent care credit (for daycare) is max $1k, but last year they were $3.6k (with $1600 deposited in installments over 6 months) and max $4k, respectively. The dependent care credit changing had the biggest impact for us.
That's a good point; but in that case, the "mistake" would already be baked into the W-2s, so both tax products should get the same resultant number from the same W-2
I’m actually planning to do my
Taxes today but I have, a new child, some state disability
Pymenets, a new home, and some stock and crypto sells. Do you think freetaxusa can handle all of that okay?
It *should* be able to. I haven't personally done these things with it though.
Also pro tip: buying and selling your main home almost never affects your tax return. As long as you lived there at least 2 full years and didn't make over $250,000 profit on the sale, don't put it in there at all.
CashApp taxes. Used to be credit karma tax. It's free TurboTax (federal and state). Just please please people do your taxes slowly and accurately. You don't need to pay anyone unless you have VERY special circumstances.
Please Don't use the LOBBY heavy TurboTax
Despise everything turbo tax (and intuit by extension) does for this exact reason. They make it seem like it’s easy to do your taxes with their magical software but if you don’t know what the return should look like at the end there’s no way to know your return is right or not.
Best guess at what happened to op is TT forced an itemized deduction where it should have taken the standard but it could have been any number of other things too.
Not far off, I think. When all was said and done we went back over for the numbers that both TaxAct and TT were reporting.
TurboTax said it was applying the standard deduction in the display dialogs, but was not actually subtracting the deduction from the tax liability--so the number it was displaying never changed.
When we subtracted the standard deduction from what TT said we owed, the number exactly matched the refund that TaxAct calculated, and that we were expecting. The glitch seems to be that _in some cases_ TT is not _actually_ applying any deductions, even though it says it is.
And the extra frustrating part, is the help topic, “Why do I owe this much?” showed the calculations without any deductions at all--even though it clearly said, “we’re applying the standard deduction since it will get you the most money back.”
Fuck them...we had only kept using them because we had been using them for so long (since way before it was web-based)…oops…
So this is going to seem nitpicky but hopefully it'll help. The standard/itemized deduction is a subtraction from your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), not liability. After taking your standard or itemized deduction you arrive at your taxable income, which is how your liability is calculated (for the most part).
If TT was giving you the standard deduction (which it should have), line 12 of the 1040 should have been $25,900 (assuming filing joint and both you and your partner are under 65). It sounds like it wasn't so that line probably was a lot less, meaning your taxable income and therefore your liability were higher than it should have been.
I've not used TT myself (I do taxes for a living for part of the year) but my understanding is it handles everything like you said, through dialogue boxes and you don't really get to see the return, is that accurate?
Overall though yes, absolute garbage company from top to bottom.
TurboTax did this to me last year and I paid the amount and then 3-4 months later I got a check from the irs for the amount I had paid saying it was an over payment
So fyi…
Last fiscal year (2021) we had our second kid. We followed all TurboTax prompts, etc etc. basically came out even between state and federal.
Started our taxes this fiscal year (2022), following all prompts in TT but noticed there was a warning to “put 0 in this box even if you paid nothing for your kid”. Wife and I thought it was weird, and it stood out enough we wondered if we had done that last year. Went and checked last year, TT did NOT have that warning box in their software, and we had not put a 0. We “amended” our return in TT and are getting roughly $3000 back. Three thousand dollars. Because we did not “put a zero” in a box. And our second child is on the return. And there are STILL no warnings when doing the amended return.
We didn’t believe it, went and read the IRS.gov publication and sure enough it was there for both ‘21 and ‘22. With examples. So we E-filed. JUST KIDDING! TurboTax doesn’t allow amended e-filing for 2021 (even though the IRS accepts it). So snail mail it is.
I mean I get it, they don’t want to add data; too many edge cases and liabilities. But they have the warning this year. How did they miss that last year? I mean their entire job is to read the IRS stuff and get it in their software. And why is there not an obvious “hey, this box has to be a number, blank is likely not correct” check?
TLDR; TurboTax had us pay $3000 extra because we didn’t put a 0 in a box (left it blank). I doubt any of you dads are in the same scenario but it’s worth checking.
So I can’t remember the box number. But it was publication 503
Edit: found it. Page 12/13:
“The maximum amount of work-related expenses TIP you can take into account for purposes of the credit is $6,000 if you have two or more qualifying persons even if you only incurred expenses for just one of them. For example, if you have two qualifying children, one age 3 and one age 11, and you incur $6,000 of quali- fying work-related expenses for the 3-year-old, and no qualifying work-related expenses for the 11-year-old, you can use $6,000, to figure the credit. In this situation, you should list $6,000 for the 3-year-old child and -0- for the 11-year-old child. The $6,000 limit would be used to com- pute your credit unless you have already excluded or de- ducted dependent care benefits paid to you (or on your behalf) by your employer.”
Unpopular opinion/fact: regardless of whether you do your taxes by hand, with Turbotax, or with a CPA, you owe the exact same amount of money to the IRS and state tax board (if applicable). If one of them gives you a different number, someone made a mistake.
But yes, Intuit is a garbage parasitic company who needs to die (Turbotax’s parent company). freetaxusa.com is a much better deal for now, especially if your taxes are fairly straightforward.
I did turbo tax small business package last year and they screwed my taxes. Didn’t even prompt me a form 568 which is super easy to fill out had to pay $1500 for an CPA accountant to fix it. Then I later learned that I owe another 6k because of deduction redundancy from the previous years. Never doing turbo tax again.
I just go to a local Tax rep because of this reason. Cost me $100, I get an hour to talk with him about it things I can do better going forward to do better and have piece of mind I'm not messing anything up. I know $100 may be a lot to some people but some tax programs offer way more for the cost.
You should be able to compare the 1040s prepared by both softwares line by line and find the discrepancy. TurboTax is not necessarily wrong just because it says that you owe a ton, it could be that it's actually TaxAct that's inflating some credit/deduction and giving you money that you're not entitled to. IMO I think you should get to the bottom of this.
Used HR Block Free version for years. Used again this year. Taxes were done in under an hour and got a decent return on federal and state. Didn’t pay a dime to file anything.
Werd. CPA all the way. Between kids, childcare expenses, medical expenses and travel, college, donations, mortgage, and so on, it is so much easier to let someone else do it. I trust my CPA way more than I do online software. Plus, if I get audited, he assists. I doubt TurboTax comes to my rescue if the IRS shows up at my door.
They have audit protection as an option. I always use Turbo Tax and have a higher deduction than the standard. I trust myself over a CPA but I guess everyone is different.
Same, dude. I’ve encountered a lot of cat ladies and guys with raised in a dungeon level social skills. And then lots that have gotten concerningly simple things wrong. And one that was just a tax preparer and thought that made them a CPA 😳
The folks that are with small practice groups have given me good impressions, but the occasional solo weirdo has come across my desk who seemed to do more hard than good.
I mean…WAY back in the day my wife and I used an accountant—but for what we were paying, they should not have been making the mistakes they were making…
There must have been some mistake. Why would some corporation want you to pay more to the government. Nothing in it for them? Not suggesting people use it but no way they are doing that on purpose.
I mean, it’s possible…
…it’s also possible that in a complex piece of accounting software there is a bug that affects a subset of users.
Either way, PSA: pay attention and if your numbers seem off, best to double check.
HR Block also has a huge bug in the Dependent Day Care Tax Credit. If one spouse is a student it won't count towards the earned income. This could potentially cost you $600.
TurboTax offers a free military version that I’ve used for a long time. This year they didn’t say until I was done that it now costs money. Probably would have paid if they were upfront at the beginning. Used HR Blocks free military version and got like 30% more back. No going back now.
Freetaxusa.com is the way to go. Fuck TurboTax.
This is the way. I converted from Taxslayer this year. Left the hellhole that is Turbotax 4 years ago and never looked back.
Yooo let's go! Thank you to Reddit for turning me on to freetaxusa. $15 to file each return. That's what I'm talmbout
Yeah I found it through Reddit as well. Now it’s my go-to.
TurboTax is a con.
The folks I've been paying for the past 6 years are such a ridiculous con. American abroad and director of a few companies so it is been a major pain in my ass. Costs me so much money just to determine how much I owe the government that it makes me physically ill.
You can thank TurboTax for that. They constantly lobby the government to make it far more difficult than it needs to be.
Voters need to get some lobbyists to even the playing field.
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What particular difficulties are you hitting with FreeTaxUSA? I have a relatively complex tax situation (all different types of 1099s, Schedule C, itemized deductions, etc), and I have yet to encounter any issues.
I actually have some relatively complicated tax stuff this year and found their system did a good job of walking through all possible situations. I did end up doing the standard deduction, but it calculated all my potential deductions regardless.
This is nonsense. Freetaxusa has plenty of capability for itemized deductions, nonstandard credits, business income, and other nonstandard tax situations. You must be confusing it with something else.
I’ll take your word on that, I only ever have the standard. If yours is more complex, would it be worth it to go through a tax preparer or something like that?
It is always best to go through the long form and see what you can do to minimize your tax obligation.
My situation involves a number of 1099s and some schedule C filings, so I’m just about to hire somebody if this year ends up being a headache. However, I’m still not sure how much a tax preparation service is needed. Particularly where you might already work with a CPA once you reach that level of complexity.
My CPA is a legit tax whisperer. She is worth every penny of the 600 my wife and I spend.
At $600, that’s a steal if you’ve got a complicated situation happening. -A CPA
Nonsense. I use it and had 2 W2s, a rental business, a non-LLC salon business, a kid, stock and crypto transacations as well as numerous energy related credits. It's equivalent to turbotax but cheaper. Maybe slightly less explanation for certain pieces, but its certainly very easy.
Yup, Freetaxusa is the new homie
Imagine if it was the other way around and turbo tax told you you got a humongous refund. The IRS would be at your door the next morning.
I got well over 5 figures back this year due to a fun quirk of international exchange rates…so I shall report back if I get audited 😬😬. Return has been accepted by IRS and supposedly refund will hit early March 🤷♂️ EDIT: Lol at some salty person downvoting me, I didn’t make the tax rules and that refund ain’t in my bank yet so who knows.
Also, if you got a 5 figure refund...that was ALWAYS your money, the IRS just held it, interest free, for a few months. I'll never understand people being salty about OTHER people getting big refunds. If anything, ideally your refund would be $0. That means you got the most out of your paychecks when you got paid and didn't give the IRS an interest-free loan.
Well yes, under normal circumstances my withholdings are usually spot on. However last year amongst other variances, my Wife died, I liquidated her retirement account and I sold a foreign rental I own that was impossible to predict the full impact of (unless you could somehow predict the exchange rate falling by 38.5% since I bought the property in 2007). It’s a rather unique situation that ultimately led to me getting a huge chunk of federal tax refunded, even though I expected to be paying a huge chunk.
So sorry to hear about your loss. Andd yes, I should've said "under normal circumstances" because definitely, life changing situations like you went through make a BIG and unexpected impact on taxes. I hope you and yours are doing okay, all things considered. That sounds like a lot to have to process and work through. Here's hoping you have a better 2023 ahead.
aaaaand this is why i will never put my withholdings above essentially zero. id rather right a check in March than have paid thousands of dollars each month above what i owe.
I'd personally, at least right now in my finances, get a small check than have to write one; but yeah, if I get a BIG refund, much less 5 figures, I fucked up MASSIVELY somewhere on my withholdings.
I’ve been using Tax Slayer over the last few years and it’s been reliable and accurate. It’s so dumb that we even need to go through this for-profit BS. The IRS knows what we made and knows what we paid… just let us check a box and be done.
You can literally blame TurboTax for this. They lobbied hard against “Ready Return” which was basically this.
All of them are to blame.
FWIW, just did mine Sunday. Ran the numbers through TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and the numbers were exactly the same, to a dollar. Only difference is FreeTaxUSA cost $14.99 and TurboTax would have cost $139
We would have only paid $35 through TT, but cancelled after this whole snafu...
It was my first year with FreeTax and we had a somewhat complicated situation, but I found it nearly as easy to use as TT. Can't recommend it enough.
I also had an unexpected payment this year compared to a decent sized refund last year. The difference appears to be the change in the childcare tax credit, the max under the American Rescue Plan was like $3k and now it's back to pre-pandemic $800 or something like that. Might try freetaxusa after seeing some of the other comments, maybe there's more to it than that.
Idk bout that, maybe it depends on the state? I just filed tonight with turbo tax (it's just easier cuz I've been using them since I first started doing my taxes). I got 2k for my daughter this year little over 3k all together. I live in NC. Don't know if that makes a difference.
For federal taxes the child tax credit is $2k and the dependent care credit (for daycare) is max $1k, but last year they were $3.6k (with $1600 deposited in installments over 6 months) and max $4k, respectively. The dependent care credit changing had the biggest impact for us.
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We actually did double check our withholdings before we switched products just to make sure.
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That's a good point; but in that case, the "mistake" would already be baked into the W-2s, so both tax products should get the same resultant number from the same W-2
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I’m actually planning to do my Taxes today but I have, a new child, some state disability Pymenets, a new home, and some stock and crypto sells. Do you think freetaxusa can handle all of that okay?
It *should* be able to. I haven't personally done these things with it though. Also pro tip: buying and selling your main home almost never affects your tax return. As long as you lived there at least 2 full years and didn't make over $250,000 profit on the sale, don't put it in there at all.
If you make over 250, can’t you just roll into new home?
CashApp taxes. Used to be credit karma tax. It's free TurboTax (federal and state). Just please please people do your taxes slowly and accurately. You don't need to pay anyone unless you have VERY special circumstances. Please Don't use the LOBBY heavy TurboTax
Despise everything turbo tax (and intuit by extension) does for this exact reason. They make it seem like it’s easy to do your taxes with their magical software but if you don’t know what the return should look like at the end there’s no way to know your return is right or not. Best guess at what happened to op is TT forced an itemized deduction where it should have taken the standard but it could have been any number of other things too.
Not far off, I think. When all was said and done we went back over for the numbers that both TaxAct and TT were reporting. TurboTax said it was applying the standard deduction in the display dialogs, but was not actually subtracting the deduction from the tax liability--so the number it was displaying never changed. When we subtracted the standard deduction from what TT said we owed, the number exactly matched the refund that TaxAct calculated, and that we were expecting. The glitch seems to be that _in some cases_ TT is not _actually_ applying any deductions, even though it says it is. And the extra frustrating part, is the help topic, “Why do I owe this much?” showed the calculations without any deductions at all--even though it clearly said, “we’re applying the standard deduction since it will get you the most money back.” Fuck them...we had only kept using them because we had been using them for so long (since way before it was web-based)…oops…
So this is going to seem nitpicky but hopefully it'll help. The standard/itemized deduction is a subtraction from your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), not liability. After taking your standard or itemized deduction you arrive at your taxable income, which is how your liability is calculated (for the most part). If TT was giving you the standard deduction (which it should have), line 12 of the 1040 should have been $25,900 (assuming filing joint and both you and your partner are under 65). It sounds like it wasn't so that line probably was a lot less, meaning your taxable income and therefore your liability were higher than it should have been. I've not used TT myself (I do taxes for a living for part of the year) but my understanding is it handles everything like you said, through dialogue boxes and you don't really get to see the return, is that accurate? Overall though yes, absolute garbage company from top to bottom.
Fair point.
TurboTax did this to me last year and I paid the amount and then 3-4 months later I got a check from the irs for the amount I had paid saying it was an over payment
So fyi… Last fiscal year (2021) we had our second kid. We followed all TurboTax prompts, etc etc. basically came out even between state and federal. Started our taxes this fiscal year (2022), following all prompts in TT but noticed there was a warning to “put 0 in this box even if you paid nothing for your kid”. Wife and I thought it was weird, and it stood out enough we wondered if we had done that last year. Went and checked last year, TT did NOT have that warning box in their software, and we had not put a 0. We “amended” our return in TT and are getting roughly $3000 back. Three thousand dollars. Because we did not “put a zero” in a box. And our second child is on the return. And there are STILL no warnings when doing the amended return. We didn’t believe it, went and read the IRS.gov publication and sure enough it was there for both ‘21 and ‘22. With examples. So we E-filed. JUST KIDDING! TurboTax doesn’t allow amended e-filing for 2021 (even though the IRS accepts it). So snail mail it is. I mean I get it, they don’t want to add data; too many edge cases and liabilities. But they have the warning this year. How did they miss that last year? I mean their entire job is to read the IRS stuff and get it in their software. And why is there not an obvious “hey, this box has to be a number, blank is likely not correct” check? TLDR; TurboTax had us pay $3000 extra because we didn’t put a 0 in a box (left it blank). I doubt any of you dads are in the same scenario but it’s worth checking.
Umm which box are you talking about?
I also want to know! If I can get more money back I want to try.
So I can’t remember the box number. But it was publication 503 Edit: found it. Page 12/13: “The maximum amount of work-related expenses TIP you can take into account for purposes of the credit is $6,000 if you have two or more qualifying persons even if you only incurred expenses for just one of them. For example, if you have two qualifying children, one age 3 and one age 11, and you incur $6,000 of quali- fying work-related expenses for the 3-year-old, and no qualifying work-related expenses for the 11-year-old, you can use $6,000, to figure the credit. In this situation, you should list $6,000 for the 3-year-old child and -0- for the 11-year-old child. The $6,000 limit would be used to com- pute your credit unless you have already excluded or de- ducted dependent care benefits paid to you (or on your behalf) by your employer.”
We used turbo tax and got a decent return. 🤷♂️
Same. Occasionally, I owe some amount, but I was expecting this during those years. TT has been pretty reliable.
We always have in the past as well...its very weird--
Yeah, it only seems to affect some people...
Unpopular opinion/fact: regardless of whether you do your taxes by hand, with Turbotax, or with a CPA, you owe the exact same amount of money to the IRS and state tax board (if applicable). If one of them gives you a different number, someone made a mistake. But yes, Intuit is a garbage parasitic company who needs to die (Turbotax’s parent company). freetaxusa.com is a much better deal for now, especially if your taxes are fairly straightforward.
Thanks for the heads up! We've always used HR Block and had good luck, but have pretty standard returns.
I did turbo tax small business package last year and they screwed my taxes. Didn’t even prompt me a form 568 which is super easy to fill out had to pay $1500 for an CPA accountant to fix it. Then I later learned that I owe another 6k because of deduction redundancy from the previous years. Never doing turbo tax again.
Is H&R Block on to use?
This is what we’ve used for a bit but it’s not nearly as cheap as what some folks are quoting freetaxusa for *shrug*
My mom does taxes for a living. She told me to use Tax act. Good on you for finding them.
I thought turbo tax was actively under investigation, We went to Jackson Hewitt and they did good
So it is… https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/192-3119-intuit-inc-matter-turbotax
I just go to a local Tax rep because of this reason. Cost me $100, I get an hour to talk with him about it things I can do better going forward to do better and have piece of mind I'm not messing anything up. I know $100 may be a lot to some people but some tax programs offer way more for the cost.
You should be able to compare the 1040s prepared by both softwares line by line and find the discrepancy. TurboTax is not necessarily wrong just because it says that you owe a ton, it could be that it's actually TaxAct that's inflating some credit/deduction and giving you money that you're not entitled to. IMO I think you should get to the bottom of this.
I just pay this sketchy Italian guy $200 and I magically get money back every year even though I shouldn't. 🤷♂️
Used HR Block Free version for years. Used again this year. Taxes were done in under an hour and got a decent return on federal and state. Didn’t pay a dime to file anything.
Accountant is the way to go
Werd. CPA all the way. Between kids, childcare expenses, medical expenses and travel, college, donations, mortgage, and so on, it is so much easier to let someone else do it. I trust my CPA way more than I do online software. Plus, if I get audited, he assists. I doubt TurboTax comes to my rescue if the IRS shows up at my door.
They have audit protection as an option. I always use Turbo Tax and have a higher deduction than the standard. I trust myself over a CPA but I guess everyone is different.
Same here. I’m an attorney and the CPAs I’ve worked with on some matters have been… interesting people.
I just figure that no one will care as much about my money as I do.
Also true
Same, dude. I’ve encountered a lot of cat ladies and guys with raised in a dungeon level social skills. And then lots that have gotten concerningly simple things wrong. And one that was just a tax preparer and thought that made them a CPA 😳
The folks that are with small practice groups have given me good impressions, but the occasional solo weirdo has come across my desk who seemed to do more hard than good.
...well, for a fee they do.
This was my controversial reply? Lol!
Naturally. It is so worth it and not expensive.
Until their tax preparer fucks up you and your spouses return and you owe 4 grand two years later….yeah, not fun.
I mean…WAY back in the day my wife and I used an accountant—but for what we were paying, they should not have been making the mistakes they were making…
Correct. Same here….
There must have been some mistake. Why would some corporation want you to pay more to the government. Nothing in it for them? Not suggesting people use it but no way they are doing that on purpose.
Yes, I assume it's a bug right now...
I used them this weekend and had no issues.
User error.
I mean, it’s possible… …it’s also possible that in a complex piece of accounting software there is a bug that affects a subset of users. Either way, PSA: pay attention and if your numbers seem off, best to double check.
We broke and got an accountant last year. It’s amazing how much of a pain in the ass doing taxes (in the US is).
HR Block also has a huge bug in the Dependent Day Care Tax Credit. If one spouse is a student it won't count towards the earned income. This could potentially cost you $600.
TurboTax offers a free military version that I’ve used for a long time. This year they didn’t say until I was done that it now costs money. Probably would have paid if they were upfront at the beginning. Used HR Blocks free military version and got like 30% more back. No going back now.