doin' the taxes

All the forms are in, and I had an enforced day off due to weather today (I haven't gotten a raise in four or five years, but the company for which I work is almost too generous with time off, especially if weather threatens), so I did the taxes. The Excellent Wife (TEW) says she loves it that I take on this responsibility, but it's just a matter of data entry.

I've done the taxes online for years. All of the three big tax websites, TurboTax, Taxcut (now from H.R.Block), and TaxAct, allow you to enter all the data and see what your results are for free; you've only gotta pay 'em the money when you actually want to print or file. For three or four years I did the entry on all three, and found that TaxAct reliably came across with a few extra bucks in refund (or found me a refund when the others said I had a payment due, however small), so for the past year or two I only used TaxAct. (Taxact is also about a third of the price of the others.)

I did the taxes in TaxAct today, and found we owed a few bucks to Governor Christie. Well, that was an unpleasant surprise... so I fired up the other two to see what they would say. TurboTax took a look at my non-standard operating system (I'm currently running Linux Mint Petra), and choked (if you don't use some form of Windows or Mac on your computer, they don't wanna play... although they have apps for Android and Kindle, of all things).

So I went over to Taxcut, and put in the info there. They came up with a smaller amount due the state (by $5), but also a smaller refund from the Feds (by $100), and the cost of their product for the two returns, with e-file, was about $70, as opposed to $17.99 for TaxAct.

So I've sent in the taxes via TaxAct. Your mileage may vary, of course, and we don't have kids, but we do own a house and itemize deductions. The TaxAct online system uses a Q&A model to fill out the forms, and allows you to either e-file or print-and-surface-mail. If you can read all your forms and you keep reasonable records, I recommend TaxAct.

(That image is from their site; let's see if they let me continue to link to it.)

Yeah, this is getting filed under "Stuff that Works".