I've never heard of FreeTaxUSA, but with my tax situation this year, I'm probably going to look for something else next year. In short, my awesome tax guy retired, and the new people to whom he referred his clients ended up being less-communicative and more expensive ($750 vs $400). I was okay paying my tax guy for his amazing services, but I'm not going to pay exorbitant fees for crap service.
My concern is that my tax situation, while not extreme, is not exactly simple. How well does something like FreeTaxUSA deal with small businesses (K1), part-time employment (1099?), stock awards and ESPP, and so on? If I can do my taxes in a day and be confident that I don't severely screw anything up, I'll totally go with that next year.
I found it MUCH more usable than TurboTax * and TaxAct. TurboTax was going to charge me >$300, and TaxAct was also > $150.
FreeTaxUSA was only $16.
* TurboTax can auto import your 1099s from most institutions. I did have to manually import 6 different forms into FreeTaxUSA - but I think the process was still faster.
I believe it handles all that. Now if you do a lot of stock trading, that's seems to be a problem. Not that it can't do it, but in the amount of data entry that has to be done.
Another reason to stick to simple index funds, and if you want to play stocks do it in a tax privileged account so you don’t have to bother with the paperwork.
This has always been my excuse for not trying FreeTaxUSA. I figured it was only for people who have extremely simple 1040 returns + a few stocks or interest. My federal return is 20 pages long, including schedules 2, 3, B, D, Form 8606's, 8889 and on and on and on. I've always been afraid I'll get 85% through and realize I need a more expensive tax prep software to file everything I need to file--and then have to go back to TaxAct and re-type everything anyway.
Yeah I did not deal with stock awards or ESPP this year, but used Freetaxusa with K-1 and 1099-NEC and it was just fine. My understanding of the QBI was a little different than theirs but I think theirs is standard (given that I am very much not a tax pro, just an excessively literal person).
My concern is that my tax situation, while not extreme, is not exactly simple. How well does something like FreeTaxUSA deal with small businesses (K1), part-time employment (1099?), stock awards and ESPP, and so on? If I can do my taxes in a day and be confident that I don't severely screw anything up, I'll totally go with that next year.