Download previous versions of turbo tax

Download previous versions of turbo tax

download previous versions of turbo tax

It transfers data from your financial software and imports it into your tax software. The TXF file extension has also been used for compressed archive files, which Windows will typically prompt you to download a program that does recognize the TurboTax. Choosing Tax Software: Basic, Deluxe or Premier? Follow Us. The online version costs $, while the download or CD costs $ TurboTax This software is great for the all-out business owner. If. Also I lost one of the CD for Where can I get the previous years version so that I can open my existing files in the respective versions.

The Best Tax Filing Software

Why you should trust us

Wirecutter staff writer Melanie Pinola has written extensively about personal finance for Lifehacker and other sites. Her articles cover topics such as when to hire a tax pro, the biggest deductions you should claim, and what to do to make the audit process less stressful.

Over the years, she’s used various tax-prep software and worked with tax pros to file complex returns involving self-employment income, business deductions (including home-office expenses), stock gains and losses, homeownership, education credits, and dependent care. She’s one of the 34% of Americans who actually like or love doing their taxes, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

This is Wirecutter’s seventh year testing and recommending tax-preparation software, and we’ve seen considerable changes and trends in that time. Previous versions of this guide were written by Kevin Purdy and Mark Smirniotis. Kevin spent five years as a freelance writer, co-owned an LLC business, organized an annual not-for-profit event, and is married with a mortgaged house and some investments—filing his own taxes along the way and writing about it, too. Before e-filing was mostly mandatory, Mark did his taxes by hand “because it was more fun that way.” He also worked as a freelance bookkeeper and served as CFO of a growing manufacturing and e-commerce business.

Mark continues to edit this guide with help from the writers and editors of Wirecutter Money, who have collectively written about and edited personal finance content for nearly 20 years, including in-depth coverage of consumer tax topics.

Who this is for

The best online tax software can help simplify the annual chore of filing your taxes on your own. But choosing the appropriate software can be confusing: Most providers, including three of the most popular options (TurboTax, H&R Block, and TaxAct), offer different versions based on specific tax scenarios. All of our recommendations aren’t well-suited for all types of returns, but we think the current slate of software and pricing tiers puts people into one of three main groups.

Simple filers: Free version

The free version of online tax software is for you if you have just W-2 income to report, without additional income from self-employment or rental property. According to TurboTax, a simple tax return includes “W-2 income, limited interest and dividend income reported on a INT or DIV, claim[ing] the standard deduction, Earned Income Tax Credit (EIC), [and] child tax credits.” H&R Block supports student-loan interest in its free tax-filing product. Credit Karma Tax covers all of the above, plus additional forms for the filer types below.

Filers who might benefit from taking deductions and credits (including homeowner tax breaks): Deluxe or Classic version

The cheapest paid versions of the tools we tested, which cost around $30 to $40 for a federal return (and about the same for a state return), add common forms or scenarios needed to itemize your taxes. If itemizing lowers your tax bill or increases your refund, these tiers are worth paying for. Applicable situations may include a Schedule A for property taxes and mortgage interest, as well as charitable contributions, education credits, or medical and dental expenses that exceed 10% of your income.

Because of recent tax changes, however, more households are likely to take the standard deduction than to itemize. You should still enter your information as normal, but if you’re not sure whether you need to itemize, we recommend starting with the free version before selecting a paid tier. Downgrading might require you to start all over. (Note that you pay only once you complete your return and submit it for filing.)

Filers with substantial income from atypical jobs: Premier or Premium version for investors or rental-property income, Self-Employed version for freelancers or business owners (or hire a tax pro)

If you have rental-property income or need to record capital gains and losses, you’ll end up paying about $50 to $70 to access those relevant IRS forms in most tax-filing software, plus an additional fee for a state return. You’ll likely have to report a boatload of information, such as costs related to property repairs and maintenance, or the dates of stock bought and sold and their price per share.

Similarly, if you freelance or run your own business, you’ll need to pay for the highest tier, which costs about $80 to $90 for a federal return. This means that the highest tiers of tax software can quickly run past $ in fees, as well as take a lot of time to work through.

Most of the services we’ve tested or recommended can handle these scenarios. If you’re confident in your bookkeeping, if you’re willing to put the time into entering all of your data, and if you have experience filing taxes for your operations, online tax programs may work for you.

But given the cost, time commitment, and changes to income taxes in tax year , we think more people should consider hiring a CPA or tax professional they can meet with face-to-face (or at least by videoconference).

Although the online tax flow mimics the process by which tax professionals interview their clients, according to CPAs we’ve interviewed, software has limitations: For example, it can’t hear the uncertainty in your voice or guess that, based on where you live, you might be due a historic-renovation credit. Plus, the tax pro does most of the dirty work for you.

A tax professional can not only help you pay the least (or get refunded the most) right now, but their guidance and advice can also set you up to better track your expenses and possibly save you money the following year. Online services can get expensive for complicated tax returns, and you may find that a local CPA adds a lot of value for sometimes as little as $50 more.

What are the free filing options from the IRS or your state?

The IRS offers a few free in-person and online tax-prep and filing options:

  • Free File Fillable Forms (even the government likes alliteration) offers jargony instructions rather than normal-speak guidance, so it’s only for those who want a free online tax-filing option and know how to do their own taxes (and like doing things the hard way). State tax prep isn’t available from the IRS, but your state might offer the same kind of online-filing forms.
  • The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and the Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) programsoffer free tax assistance to specific groups of people. VITA provides basic tax prep and e-filing, generally for people who make under $56,, have a disability, or speak limited English. TCE provides tax help to those who are 60 and older and have retirement-related questions. For both programs, you need to head to a site, usually a community center or library, where volunteers can help you out—the IRS, however, notes that available services can vary depending on the volunteer pool. If you have a complicated return that includes a Schedule C (self-employment or freelancing), Schedule D (capital gains and losses), or a handful of other complex forms, you’ll have to file your taxes another way.
  • Free File Online is another option that lets you file your federal (and sometimes state) return for free using popular online tax software, provided your AGI is $69, or less. H&R Block, TurboTax, and TaxAct all have Free File Online options. Each provider has its own requirements, such as state of residence, age, military status, EITC eligibility, or AGI limits. After testing the most popular software’s commercial options, we recommend TurboTax’s Free File product if you meet the qualifications (generally an AGI of $36, or less).

How we picked

Under the hood, every tax-software platform fills the same IRS forms and uses the same math to calculate the amount you owe or the amount of your refund. But they don’t all offer the same experience—in our testing, we found some major discrepancies that would’ve cost a taxpayer more with one software than it would with another.

These are the key distinctions we considered when recommending tax software:

  • Accurate, effective interview and guidance: The best tax-prep software identifies both common and uncommon circumstances in your life and shows you the relevant buttons and questions to catch the necessary stuff while discarding irrelevant bits. It’s a difficult balancing act.
  • Variety of supported forms and clarity of pricing: People with the simplest returns can expect to file for free with any major tax app. Everyone else has to choose which level of service they need. We prefer online tax apps that cover more situations in lower-priced tiers, and we strongly dislike those that hide upsells and additional fees until you’re deep into the process.
  • Clear, accessible language: Friendly prompts and jargon-free explanations go a long way toward accurate numbers and a stress-free experience. We noted when we encountered screens filled with unexplained tax terms or vaguely labeled fields, and we gave credit when software made it easier to understand something tricky.
  • Interface and design: If a tax app is poorly made and hard to use, it doesn’t just cause annoyance—it can produce errors that cost money. People tend to click from screen to screen when they become bored or locked into a routine. They also tend to scan long lists (such as deduction categories), creating a bad scenario for tax filing. In tax software, everything should be labeled unambiguously, and bugs and glitches warrant demerits.
  • Service and support: Thorough and well-written help screens are crucial when you’re uncertain about what counts and what doesn’t for income and deductions. You should be able to find clear answers to common problems quickly. Some services offer live chat, or at higher-priced tiers, on-demand support from a CPA or an EA. Where possible, we tested these support services too.

For our top picks, we also looked at import options, such as connecting to your bank for interest statements or letting you upload a photo of your W While this can be convenient and save you time, we didn’t prioritize such features in our review, due to the limitations that some tax programs have with importing documents.

For example, Credit Karma doesn’t yet import bank statements, only W-2s—and in our tests, it brought up incorrect information. TurboTax may or may not be able to transfer your prior year’s return from another tax program or import your W-2 from a smartphone photo via its mobile app. Most people will still have to enter the majority of their information manually.

How we tested

This year, we retested six tax apps and gave one IRS Free File program a whirl. We created fictional profiles of people or households with common tax situations that would fit into the various levels of tax preparation software: Free, Deluxe or Classic, and Premier or Premium (or Self-Employed). Each profile got as much backstory and detail as necessary to move through the entire tax-filing process, save actually submitting the returns to the IRS.

Our fictional filers:

  • Steve Straightforward makes $32, as a customer service representative in Florida, a state that doesn’t collect income taxes. He has some interest savings from a bank account and rents his apartment.
  • Frank and Frannie Family each make $50, as salaried office workers in Ohio. They own a home and have two children, one of whom was born in and goes to day care. They have some student-loan debt, make charitable donations, and contribute to a state-sponsored college savings plan.
  • Erica Entrepreneur makes $, running her event-planning business in Massachusetts, uses her car for work, and has a home office. She also has student-loan debt and investments, and she contributes to a SEP IRA (a retirement plan for business owners).

We ran Steve Straightforward through the free options of all six commercial tax software we tested, plus the Free File version from TurboTax. As a result, we dismissed TaxSlayer without further testing (more on why in the Competition section). We then ran Frank and Frannie Family through the remaining five candidates. Finally, we used Erica Entrepreneur’s return to test how our top pick for itemizers would fare with a more complicated tax scenario.

For each filing, we:

  • made a screen recording of the process
  • noted any glitches or annoying pop-ups and upsells
  • turned to the help section for both common and obscure questions

We also spent a total of nearly four hours in live chat or on the phone with customer support from H&R Block, Credit Karma, and TurboTax.

In the end, after preparing 12 fake returns, we had a holistic view of what it’s like to file taxes in each of these apps.

Our pick for simple returns and no income restrictions: Credit Karma Tax

Credit Karma Tax is our pick for the best free online tax software if you have a simple return and don’t need much support. That’s in large part because Credit Karma doesn’t charge anything for any level of complexity, federal or state. You won’t be nagged to upgrade for things you might not need to file, or hit with a surprising fee after entering all of your information. But because its in-app or live support isn’t as thorough as that of other software, we recommend it only for taxpayers with the most basic returns.

You “pay” by signing up for Credit Karma’s main service, which offers recommendations for credit cards and other financial products based on your credit report and other info you provide to the company.

But because its in-app or live support isn’t as thorough as that of other software, we recommend it only for taxpayers with the most basic returns.

When you begin the tax-filing process, you have the option to share your tax info with Credit Karma to build or add to your general financial profile on the site. A spokesperson from Credit Karma said that doing so lets the company recommend personal finance products that may not surface from only your credit report (which it gets when you enter your Social Security number).

For example, if you have high income but a low credit score, it would show you credit cards you’re likely to get approved for. The option to share your tax-return data with your main Credit Karma account is checked by default, but you can opt out (that said, we don’t love when companies do this). This sharing setup is not unique to Credit Karma, either: Other tax software, such as TurboTax and H&R Block, ask permission to share your info with their other products to better personalize their offerings.

This is also how other popular financial tools, such as taniaarraindegia.esy.es, work. We think that’s a fair trade for the certainty of knowing you can file both your federal and state taxes for free, at least for the most common tax situations. Unlike other tax-filing software that can charge upwards of $60 for audit assistance, Credit Karma includes it for free, which is helpful in the rare event you’re audited.

Our Credit Karma Tax review showed that it was accurate and up to date with current tax laws, according to our fake filings. When we tested it using Steve Straightforward’s simple tax return, we arrived at the same numbers that we did in all of the other apps. With Frank and Frannie Family’s slightly more complicated return, Credit Karma Tax took the full amount of the childcare credit that a few other apps did not accurately count, saving our made-up taxpayers a significant $ Though not everyone will have that same situation, it gave us more confidence in Credit Karma’s software compared with other apps—including TaxAct, which did not catch the mistake.

Using Credit Karma is straightforward: After you answer a few basic questions about your household—such as whether you’re filing single or married (jointly), whether you have dependents, whether you own a home, whether you have interest income, and so on—the site shows you the most common tax forms related to your answers on one central homepage, with access to additional (uncommon) forms a click away.

Credit Karma’s simple interview process makes it easy to get started filing your taxes for free.

Unlike other tax-prep software, Credit Karma Tax doesn’t walk you through the process from beginning to end in a straight line. After each form you finish, you have to click to go back to the tax homepage and select the next form to complete or edit, rather than move to the next form automatically. As annoying as that might sound, we like this setup because it helps ensure you won’t miss any of the forms that might apply to you.

We liked Credit Karma Tax’s minimalistic interface, which has generously large input boxes for each field. Like other tax apps, it splits long IRS forms into separate screens, but if you don’t care to enter your information piecemeal, you can switch from a multipage to single-page view for each form. In terms of agony, this is a step above the IRS’s Free File Fillable Forms.

If you’re unsure which number on the tax form you should enter, you can click the i icon on some fields to see an image of the box on that specific form—a helpful feature that’s unique to Credit Karma, even if you won’t see the icon on every form.

For simple filers who have only a few standard forms to enter, Credit Karma Tax’s online support is fine. Clicking the Help button gives you the option to search the help center in a new tab, which answered most of our most basic questions without bogging us down in the details. It also provides context-sensitive FAQs in a panel beside the form.

Email, live chat, and in-app support, however, weren’t always helpful, which is why we don’t recommend the service for more than simple online tax-filing situations.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Although it added live chat this year, the support and in-line descriptions are less helpful for Credit Karma Tax versus TurboTax, for example. If you’re unsure about what you should enter and you can’t find the answer in the online FAQs, you’re pretty much on your own.

Help tools and explanations sometimes pointed to the IRS’s own documents to explain things, or essentially used tautologies.

For example, when Credit Karma asked what category Erica Entrepreneur’s principal business fell under, we clicked a ? button. The explainer said, “Select from the dropdown the type that best describes your business or profession.” Since we genuinely did not know which drop-down option to choose, we contacted support via chat (phone support is not available).

The customer service rep instructed us to click on menus that weren’t there, choose options we couldn’t see, or enter things that did not apply to this profile’s profession—all the while arguing that we should be seeing those screens. Half an hour (during which no one had any fun) passed before we eventually classified Erica’s event-planning business as “Rental and Leasing Services,” whether or not that was the right one to choose.

TurboTax makes entering the correct information much easier: You simply type in a description of your occupation in a free-form text field, and the software finds the right name for you.

Also, Credit Karma Tax doesn’t support filing multistate tax returns. For example, if you moved from Mississippi to Illinois (and if you worked in and had income taxes withheld from both states), you won’t be able to file your state returns with this software.

If you need to file a multistate return or if you might need support to file a more complex return—perhaps you’re unsure what a form field is asking—we think you’ll be best served by TurboTax Deluxe’s strong in-app explanations, or with more advanced support from a tax pro. Otherwise, you can just enter the info from your tax forms into Credit Karma, e-file for free, and call it a day.

Our pick for free filing if you meet the eligibility requirements: IRS Free File Program delivered by TurboTax

TurboTax offers the best guidance of all the tax software we tested, which makes it ideal for itemizers. Before paying for TurboTax Deluxe, though, check to see if you qualify for the IRS Free File Program delivered by TurboTax. If you do, you can get the functionality of TurboTax Deluxe without paying for it—and without the upsells.

IRS Free File is available only to certain filers, and for TurboTax, your household has to meet at least one of the following criteria:

  • an AGI of less than $36,
  • eligibility for the EITC
  • active-duty military service with an AGI of less than $69,

While TurboTax Free (the commercial version) has no income restrictions, it doesn’t include forms for things like student-loan interest, mortgage interest, or self-employment income and expenses (all of which you get with TurboTax Deluxe). TurboTax Free also tried to upsell us twice for unneeded services like one-on-one support, which is the main reason we recommend Credit Karma Tax for people with simple filing needs.

Источник: [taniaarraindegia.esy.es]

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