
Why I'm boycotting TurboTax this year - selbyk
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11320386/turbotax-boycott-lobbying-tax-filing-season-tax-day-april-15
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pjob
I will be boycotting TurboTax this year. Their latest ad campaign[1] is
particularly egregious. It claims that (with TurboTax's help) "people can be
good at anything... even taxes". Given the amount of lobbying that Intuit does
to make taxes more complicated, this message is disingenuous at best.

[1] [https://www.campaignlive.com/article/turbotax-returns-new-
ca...](https://www.campaignlive.com/article/turbotax-returns-new-campaign-
culminating-super-bowl-spot/1669659)

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g82918
So the dichotomy between the advertising and the actual actions is what caused
you to boycott in this particular year? Whereas before you didn't care?

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pjob
I've actually been avoiding TurboTax for about 3 years now. Mostly due to
dissatisfaction with their lobbying policy.

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bsmith89
I have been very satisfied with CreditKarma's free tax filing. It has
_actually_ been free for me, while TT has felt like a bait-and-switch ("felt
like" because it is).

Yes, I realize that even though I am not paying for the product, I'm giving
them the benefit of my personal data. But at least I am not aware of CK
lobbying congress to keep an unnecessarily complex tax system.

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downerending
For most of my life, I just worked my own taxes and filed on paper. Used TT
recently as my taxes were quite complex for a few years.

It seems now that filing on paper is no longer a practical thing to do, time-
and complexity-wise. What's the closest thing available these days? (for
federal and all states, obviously)

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perl4ever
I don't really want to go with somebody I've never heard of, but H&R Block
seems to be providing their free option to anyone with income under $69K. They
have an option to import your previous year's Turbotax file.

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copperx
Does that include state tax filing?

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perl4ever
It appears to, however I haven't completed the process yet.

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csb6
Does anyone know of any open source software that can help with
filing/calculating taxes? Would be very useful to people who don’t want to be
stuck with proprietary software

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perl4ever
The normal approach is to keep copies in a format that isn't dependent on
specific tax software, and the IRS only has a few years to audit you or ask
for more money. I was undergoing a ten year background check once where I had
to certify no government debts, and found a small underpayment (W-2 that the
IRS had but I never received) and they wouldn't take my money.

I think worrying about open source in this context is optimizing entirely the
wrong thing. If you keep things simple, then at worst, you'd have to copy your
printout onto the forms for an amended return by hand, and that wouldn't be
too onerous.

