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Kathy Yakal The Best Tax Software of 2018 It's not as hard as you think to prepare your taxes yourself—and you get to keep more of your refund. We test, rate, and compare eight popular online services that can help. Do Your Taxes Online The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in December of 2017, is supposed to simplify and reduce the income taxes paid by US citizens next year. While no one yet knows what the 2018 tax forms and schedules will look like, the IRS has long since finalized the 2017 tax year forms and schedules, and the doors are open for filing. It's past time to get to work on your taxes, if you haven't already started.

You can still pick up paper copies of the forms at your local public library, but there's no need for that anymore. Several sites and apps make short work of simple returns for free; you can prepare and file yours in minutes. You might even. You don't much time left—the deadline for filing your taxes is Tuesday, April 17—but with right app it doesn't have to be a huge hassle, as we'll explain. If your financial situation involves more than, say, a W-2 and some interest income or student loan interest, you can sign up for one of the many sites that support the preparation and filing of all major IRS forms and schedules. The more complex and confusing your tax situation is, the more obvious the benefits become. If you've had seven freelance jobs in three states in the past year, these services can help.

If that sounds like you, our story on is a good place to start. These online personal tax applications aren't putting all the tax-preparation professionals out of work. Though the best tax sites are capable of producing very complex returns, some individuals may still want professional guidance to ensure accuracy and avoid IRS corrections and audits. However you choose to prepare your taxes, the time to start is now, as the deadline for filing this year is April 17.

The sooner you start, the sooner you'll be done—and, if you get a refund, the sooner you'll have a little extra money in the bank, too. Note, too, that tax services often increase their prices as the deadline draws nearer, and live help systems can get swamped at the end of the tax season. So gather up all your documents and pick a service from our roundup of the top contenders to help you get through the process. This Year's Field We tested the midrange versions of eight personal tax preparation websites, the most popular options among the largest group of US taxpayers. Most of them don't tackle particularly thorny topics like self-employment, capital gains and losses, and rental income, but they can handle W-2s, miscellaneous income, interest income, ordinary dividends, and itemized deductions.

Every tax software company offers versions that can take on more complex incomes, deductions, and credits—in fact, more than one has introduced a new version this year designed for self-employment and the gig economy—but you pay more for this advanced coverage. Prices for the editions we reviewed range from totally free for both federal and state returns (Credit Karma Tax) to $69.95 for federal and $36.95 for state (Jackson Hewitt Deluxe).

What Tax Sites Do Personal tax preparation websites work similarly, though there are some major differences between their user experiences, the tax topics they cover, and the quantity, quality, and accessibility of the guidance they offer. You'll see this when you read the reviews.

All of them act as virtual tax preparers. Instead of forcing you to see the actual IRS forms and schedules, they ask you a lengthy series of simple (usually) questions about your tax-related income and expenses. They start with your contact details and questions about your filing status and dependents. Then they launch into your W-2 and other income, and proceed through any other issues that apply to you. Tax sites follow the path of the Form 1040 (or 1040EZ) and its related forms and schedules (1099, Schedule A, Schedule B, and so on), posing relevant queries along the way. They take your responses, do all necessary calculations, and deposit your numbers and other data onto the correct, official IRS documents—all in the background, out of sight.

When you've provided all the tax data that applies to you, these applications do three things. They check your return for potential mistakes, warning you about any errors or omissions they've found and giving you the opportunity to fix them. They transfer needed data over to any state returns you must file and help you answer any state-specific questions. Finally, they help you file your return electronically or print it out and collect any fees due. How To Use Tax Software These services offer two ways to move through their virtual interviews. During the early stages, after you've created a user name and password and complied with any security requirements, they work like any other wizard.

They solicit personal information by sometimes providing blank fields for you to fill in. Other times, you'll select options from drop-down lists or click buttons to indicate a yes-or-no response. When you've completed all the required information on a screen, you advance to the next. You can back up to the previous screen when you need to. Most sites don't let you proceed until you've answered all the questions on a page; they stop you and highlight the problem. If you're not sure about a particular detail, such as an amount or the necessity of a middle initial, some sites let you bookmark or flag the page so you can move on; they then remind you to go back before finishing your return. This navigation pattern—clicking to move forward or retreat—continues throughout each website.

Once you've started entering data, other navigation options appear, toolbars that divide the site into sections, outlines of the site's tax items, lists of forms, and topics. Providing the Numbers Once you complete the personal information section, you move on and start to answer questions about your income and expenses. On some screens, you'll be responding to a basic question that doesn't require numerical data, and other times, you'll need to refer to your W-2, 1099s, etc. At other times, you'll have to consult the careful records you've kept throughout the year, documenting things like charitable contributions and medical expenses. Every site divides its tax content into (roughly) the logical groupings originated by the IRS: income, deductions, credits, health insurance, taxes paid, and miscellaneous issues. They all have a kind of home page for each section that displays a list of the topics covered.

You click a button to start every section that applies to you, answer the questions in the miniwizard that appears, and then return to the list. The topic you just visited now have a button that reads Edit or Revisit, so you can go back and check your work and make any necessary changes. When you finish the income section, you see a summary of what you entered there. If you're satisfied, you can move on to the deduction home page and repeat the process until you're finished. Speaking of deductions, if you have specific questions about health-related deductions, check out my on PCMag's sister site, Everyday Health.

Some sites offer an alternative. Instead of moving back and forth to the section home pages, you can ask to visit just about every topic in one long, continuous wizard. Of course, you can click through anything that doesn't apply, but at least this shows you all the possibilities. Help at Hand Even if a query in these site's onscreen interviews is clearly worded, you may still be unsure whether you're supposed to supply information, and what that information might be. Tax websites help you understand those confusing elements in a variety of ways.

They might turn a word or phrase into a hyperlink that opens a small window containing a more detailed explanation. Likewise, they might anticipate your questions and post links to related Q&As right on the pages that would spur you to ask the question. This kind of context-sensitive help is extremely important. If you need to consult any of the other methods of help detailed below, it means that the service has failed to anticipate your needs, your time has been wasted, and your blood pressure has probably gone up.

Sites that lack good context-sensitive help are heavily penalized in our reviews. Still, no service can anticipate every contingency or question. Most tax preparation applications offer a second tier of giant help databases of tax information that you can search if you're really stuck. Some offer glossaries, too. You may be directed occasionally to read IRS instructions or peruse an IRS publication, but that should be vanishingly rare in a good service. After all, IRS documents are free, and unless you're using Credit Karma Tax, you're largely paying for the convenience of not reading IRS documents.

The IRS is, of course, the last word on taxes, but creating lucid, reassuring guides is not one of its notable strengths. Human Guides If all that isn't enough, you might want to interact with a real human being. These sites offer connections to tax professionals via chat, email, or phone. If you think you're likely to need to rely on this kind of direct contact with your tax service, you're much better off doing your taxes early. Otherwise they might be overwhelmed by last-minute e-filers. If you're using H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, or Liberty Tax, and you're just not confident enough about some of your tax issues, you can always hand over your return to someone in one of their offices and let them take it from there (for additional fees, of course). TurboTax provides the most innovative way to get human help.

Its SmartLook feature creates a connection between you and a tax expert. You see them talking to you live on your screen.

At the same time, they can see where you're having trouble by viewing your screen and troubleshooting your problem. These individuals can help you put the right information in the right place on the TurboTax site and provide some additional basic guidance, but they can't serve as tax advisors, like CPAs or EAs (Enrolled Agents) could. If anticipate needing that kind of personal service, you might explore the new TurboTax Live (for which you'd pay $179.99 for federal e-filing, and $39.99 per state).

You'll be able to ask questions of a CPA or EA employed by Intuit as often as you need to during the preparation process. This version uses a split-screen when you're getting help, so your taxes will be on one side of the screen and the friendly face of your financial professional on the other. The two of you will review your final return together before filing, and Intuit's 100% Accuracy Guarantee applies. Taxes on the Run Probably the easiest way to prepare your taxes using one of these solutions is to plop down in front of your desktop or laptop and use their browser-based versions. But if you want to take care of this annual task while you're away from your PC, any of them can accommodate you. H&R Block, TaxSlayer, and TurboTax have that support all major IRS forms and schedules. The other five use, so you can view and use their sites just fine on your mobile browser, too.

We'll be reviewing those soon. It will, of course, be months before we see what the tax-year 2018 IRS forms and schedules look like with the new tax cuts implemented. It's taking even the professionals some time to unpack and analyze everything that's in the massive new law, but you probably have an idea already about how you might be affected, so start planning accordingly until the new crop of personal tax preparation websites appears next fall. Once you have your your 2017 taxes in order, you might want to get a head start on managing your money in preparation for next year with. Have sensitive tax documents you want to dispose of safely? For that, check out the. If you haven't already started, you should read our.

Supports all major IRS and state forms and schedules. Clean, simple interface. Cons: Insufficient, spotty help.

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Missing two state returns and some forms/situations. Search tool not always accurate. No overall site navigation tool. Limited mobile functionality. Bottom Line: The completely free Credit Karma Tax supports all major IRS forms and schedules for federal and state returns, but it has an atypical navigation system, anemic help resources, and it doesn't yet offer returns for every state.

TAX preparation is moving to the cloud. The makers of the better-known tax prep programs —, and — say that many customers, particularly younger ones, prefer Web-based programs to old-fashioned, desktop versions. Web-based programs — techies call this cloud computing — reside on remote servers that customers access via their browsers. They offer the convenience of working on a return from any Internet-connected computer and having that return stored on the software makers’ secure servers. After spending several days running my family’s tax information through Web and desktop offerings, I learned that I’m old-school. For a decade, I’ve completed our return on my Mac desktop, and I prefer that.

Desktop programs may be costlier and, in some ways, clunkier — you must buy them on CD or download them — but they also offer more flexibility. A single purchase, for example, lets you prepare and file multiple returns, as you might want to do if you’re part of a same-sex couple or if you help family members or friends with their taxes. And you can more easily jump back and forth between the tax return and the interviews the programs use to gather information. That lets you check entries as you make them, as my wife, a C.P.A., insists upon. What you lose in convenience, you gain in control. Each of the tax preparation programs, whether desktop or online, has strengths and shortcomings. TurboTax is the easiest to use, importing lots of financial information with just a few clicks.

H&R Block promises the most reassuring help — its staff will represent you at no extra charge if you’re audited. TaxAct offers the best price. A look at each provider’s offerings shows where it excelled and stumbled in preparing my family’s 2012 return. TurboTax TurboTax’s maker, Intuit, has its roots in technology, not taxes, and its facility with bits and bytes shows in its wares. Its desktop and online programs make doing taxes as simple as such a time-eating task can be. If you end up cursing come tax time, the target will be the I.R.S., not your software.

I downloaded the desktop version of TurboTax Premier for $89.99 — though I learned later that I could have paid $10 less if I’d bought it on CD at my local Staples. The download took only a few seconds, as did the import of information from our 2011 return. All of the unchanged data from 2011 — names, addresses, federal ID numbers, even descriptions of business expenses — popped into the right places on the 2012 forms. Even the names of the charities we support carried over. The software also imported my wife’s W-2 and all of the information on our investments from Vanguard, T.

Rowe Price and Fidelity. All I had to do was key in details for a few local banks and update the amounts we’d given to charity. The online version of TurboTax, by contrast, didn’t import as much. My attempt to transfer our 2011 return failed, and an import from one of the fund companies went awry. I inherited an I.R.A., and the money is invested in about a half-dozen funds. Instead of creating an entry for a single 1099-R, the program created a half-dozen, which I had to combine.

Otherwise, the online program looked and worked much the same way as the desktop software. I didn’t have to pay to try it because TurboTax, like H&R Block and TaxAct, doesn’t require online users to pay until they file their returns. Had I filed with the online version of TurboTax Premier, I would have paid $49.99 for a single federal return — the price as it was discounted at the time. But TurboTax says it could rise to as much as $74.99, its list price, before April 15. TurboTax upgraded its assistance features for this year’s tax filing season — a welcome improvement. In the past, I’d found some help links hard to locate and navigate. When I wanted to pose a question to a tax expert, I had to dig around.

But not anymore. When I had a question about recording tax-exempt interest, I clicked on the help link, and TurboTax offered a choice between a call and an online chat. Within seconds, I was e-chatting with Marilyn G., and she pointed me to the right spot on the return. We were done in less than five minutes, and I paid nothing extra. Apple g4 cd/rw firmware 1.1 free download for mac windows 10. I’ve had a tougher time buying jeans online. (All three companies also provide extensive tax-law explanations embedded in their programs.). Yes, businesses have to market themselves and grow, but this kind of promotion grates when you’re pondering the big bill you owe the I.R.S.

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H&R Block at Home In past years, I’ve liked H&R Block’s desktop software. It didn’t import quite as much information as TurboTax did, and occasionally didn’t provide some obscure piece of tax guidance that I could find in TurboTax. But I enjoyed its eye-pleasing, easy-to-use interface and concluded that, for most people, it could do a fine job. This year, I had problems installing it. I tried to download the desktop version from Block’s Web site and failed — four times. I kept trying to remove any obstacles at my end.

I quit my browser, Safari, and restarted. I turned off my pop-up blocker and my antivirus software. I rebooted my Mac.

Nothing helped. Stymied, I trundled over to Staples, where I bought Block’s Premium software on CD for $59.99.

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After that 30-minute detour, I popped in the CD and set about installing the software and the latest updates. During the update installation, the program quit. Finally, it worked. Were the glitches my fault? I’m no techie; my nephew who is about to turn 11 can do more with my iPhone than I can. But I was working with the same Mac and antivirus program as last year, and if any software should be idiot-proof, it’s a tax preparation program. Lots of nontechies use software to do their taxes.

After installation, Block’s desktop program was fine. As in years past, it didn’t import as much information as TurboTax, but it otherwise handled our return without problems. And I love the lime green of its interface, which calls to mind Kermit the Frog.

Block’s online offering operated just as smoothly. And because it didn’t have to be installed, it spared me a spike in blood pressure. Had I used it to file, I would have paid $49.95 for a federal return. Block’s assistance also impresses. If you use its software to file your return, the company promises that one of its tax experts will represent you, free, if you’re audited. The chances of needing this help are slim — the I.R.S.

Audits less than 1 percent of individual returns, according to. But even the idea of an audit brings angst, and that guarantee reassures. TaxAct TaxAct’s selling point is price. The desktop version of its Ultimate Bundle, which includes electronic filing of a federal and a state return, costs $21.95.

TaxAct doesn’t sell a desktop version for the Mac, so in years past I had to load the software onto my wife’s PC and work on our return there. This year, I opted to try the online offering instead. I plowed through our return without difficulty, though I did have to type in more of our information because TaxAct imported less than TurboTax and Block did. In addition to being inexpensive, TaxAct is quirky. Its maker, 2nd Story Software in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, does some things differently than its competitors. Its interview questions come in a different order, and some of them address surprising topics.

Only TaxAct, for example, asked me whether I had a conscientious objection to Social Security and had filed documenting it. Members of some religious denominations can be exempt from Social Security taxes, as long as they promise not to take benefits. I didn’t need to know this, but it was a fascinating tidbit to learn — and I’m a fan of anything that relieves tedium at tax time.