If you're in Canada I can't recommend SimpleTax [1] enough. Donation-based, so free or what you can pay. Was recently acquired by Wealthsimple.

[1] https://simpletax.ca/

Thanks so much for sharing. I wasn't aware and will try it this time.

It's quite a bit more expensive here in the U.S. The issue is that many of the people they are steering away from the free filing (i.e. low income) would benefit from it the most: they have very little money already and their taxes are often a very straightforward tax table lookup. So most would receive no value from a premium tax prep service.

Yeah. TubroTax is around $40 to file. CreditKarma offers their own version which is free. The controversy is that the IRS bound its own hands in saying it couldn't make its own filing software.

I see no problems with private companies charging a Fee to provide a better service.

The Credit Karma blurb is here:

https://www.creditkarma.com/tax

But -- the hard bits are state-specific support, and the supplementals K-1, 6250, et al. Anyone have first-hand experience with CreditKarma tax filing?

There's also TaxAct -- anyone tried it?

https://www.taxact.com/

I've used credit karma for the last 2 or 3 years - it's very easy if your taxes are simple (e.g. a job change mid-year, a spouse, itemized deductible, all very easy). It was even ok when my taxes included some weird forms last year because a previous employer was sold and my options were worth a few k - had to figure out where to enter things, but i paid roughly the amount of taxes i expected to so i assumed i filled out karma credit's app correctly.

Overall i think CreditKarma is fine if you don't mind that you're sharing data with a company that would love to middleman you into signing up for a new credit card or something. I find their emails pretty easy to ignore and it's felt like a fair trade thus far, though I may look into the IRS offerings this spring and see what else is available.

edit: in California.

> Anyone have first-hand experience with CreditKarma tax filing?

I've used it for the last 3 years in California. Quite simple, free, supports backdoor Roths. Tax returns were quickly accepted and paid out into my bank account.

Dunno about more complex use-cases (I don't own a home or a business, and I work in one state year-round), but definitely worth a look.

I used TaxAct in the past but they're now almost as expensive as TurboTax.

I now use https://www.freetaxusa.com - a little less hand holding than TurboTax, but if you know what you're doing it handles almost every situation and is, as advertised, free.