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Doing your taxes may never be fun, but the right tool can turn the worst annual chore into a manageable—and, dare we say, rewarding—afternoon. The best tax software ensures that you get all of the credits and deductions you deserve, without dragging you through forms hell. After testing nine online tax apps, we can say with confidence that TurboTax Free Edition is the most sophisticated, accurate, and straightforward tool for the job.
Because of its superior step-by-step tax guidance, Intuit’s TurboTax has been one of our top picks since we started testing tax software, in 2013. But there are two instances in which we believe you should take a different route:
Confused yet? Here’s a flowchart of the options we recommend this year:
Finally, if you absolutely do not want to pay any money to file your tax return (regardless of how badly the software might make you want to rip your hair out), and you make $73,000 or less annually, MyFreeTaxes (sponsored by United Way) on the TaxSlayer platform is the way to go. (Those who make more than $73,000 annually can still file for free using Cash App Taxes, but we don’t recommend it because of its opaque support system.) IRS Free File has also partnered directly with TaxSlayer, but that offer is more restricted, available only to individuals making $60,000 or less who are age 57 or younger.
Regardless of whether you’re using the MyFreeTaxes version or TaxSlayer’s own offering, the software is less user-friendly than our picks. So we recommend these options only if you have a simple return and are comfortable researching tax information yourself, rather than getting assistance from the software. You can learn more in our Other good software section.
TurboTax Free Edition is the most polished tax app around. And most people don’t have to upgrade to Deluxe if they take the standard deduction.
TurboTax is the best online tax software because of its thorough and intelligent interview process. Although TurboTax requires us to state that its Free Edition is “for simple tax returns only” and that “not all taxpayers qualify”—and even though the company recommends TurboTax Deluxe if you want to “maximize tax deductions and credits” (who doesn’t?)—we think most people should start with the Free Edition.
Even if you might have some deductible expenses, such as mortgage interest or charitable donations, it’s better to start with the Free Edition and upgrade to Deluxe only if you’re required to. The reason for this is simple (though not obvious if you’ve never used TurboTax before): If you start with TurboTax Deluxe and enter all of your information only to find that the standard deduction is more valuable than itemizing, you’ll have to either pay the Deluxe fee ($59 at this writing, plus $54 per state) or clear out all of the information and start over with the Free Edition. Thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was passed a few years ago, most people will benefit from taking the standard deduction (90% of taxpayers filed with the standard deduction in 2019).
There is one exception to this recommendation, though. If you have a simple return and student loan interest or tuition payments, you should file using H&R Block Free Online instead. TurboTax Free Edition doesn’t let you file the forms related to interest deductions and educational credits, so it will prompt you to upgrade to Deluxe.
H&R Block isn’t as easy to use as our top pick, but it lets you claim college tuition and student loan interest deductions for free. Use it if you have only these and a few other forms to enter.
Student loan interest and higher-education tuition and fees are valuable deductions and credits you can take even if you file with the standard deduction. Unfortunately, TurboTax Free Edition doesn’t support filing those forms. H&R Block Free Online does. If you have those student forms and only a handful of other forms to file, such as a W-2 and bank interest income, this is the best way to file for free.
In our tests, we found H&R Block’s help screens and in-app guidance to be nearly as good as TurboTax’s. However, the software was also more error-prone, especially as the complexity of returns increased. We ran into a couple of problems trying to hunt down stray forms, and the automated chat help was ineffective. For those reasons, we recommend using H&R Block Free Online to save money only when you’re filing a basic return with a student loan interest deduction or tuition credits.
When should you hire a CPA or tax preparer, and when can you do your taxes yourself? A look at the costs, advantages, and disadvantages of hiring a tax pro.
As with auto repair, home improvement, and first aid, there are some situations when it makes sense to DIY and others that are better left to the pros. If you freelance or own a business, if you manage rental property, or if you have more complex investments than interest or dividend payouts, you can save yourself time and stress by finding a good tax professional.
Though a tax preparer’s services will likely cost you more than even the most expensive tier of DIY tax software—CPA fees vary depending on where you live and the complexity of your return—you get a lot of value from that higher price tag. Once you turn over your forms and documents, the pro enters your data for you. This not only saves you time but also prevents DIY errors. Plus, a tax professional’s pricing is often more up-front than that of most online software, which will often try to upsell you midway through the filing process. Also, building a relationship with a professional you can count on for years to come is invaluable.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t address the concerns many people have with major tax software companies like TurboTax and H&R Block. Both companies have faced multiple lawsuits and investigations regarding their marketing, lobbying, and other business practices. Adding to that public distrust, many people who filed their 2019 tax returns with these companies did not receive their stimulus payments (however, according to the IRS, this was often because payments were made to bank accounts that were closed or no longer active).
It’s not quite the same thing (and we’re not trying to make excuses for shady business practices), but just as all printers suck, all tax software options are flawed. TurboTax is arguably the easiest yet most thorough and accurate way to file your taxes on your own. But if you have qualms about using that service and want to do your own taxes, you may be able to use MyFreeTaxes (which offers a free version of TaxSlayer that we recommend, sponsored by United Way). You could also use one of the IRS’s Free File partners, or manually fill out the IRS’s Free File Fillable Forms (even the government likes alliteration, apparently). These options provide less hand-holding and have more-frustrating interfaces than TurboTax and H&R Block; that means you could potentially make more errors. But they’re completely free. For live help, the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE) programs provide assistance from certified volunteers for those who qualify. (Generally, you need to make $60,000 or less, have a disability, or speak limited English.)
Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer covering the intersection of home office, productivity, and technology. Previously, she focused on pets and personal style for Wirecutter. She’s also written about personal finance topics for The Simple Dollar, MarketWatch, MSNMoney, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. For the latest update to this guide—which marks Wirecutter’s 10th year of testing and recommending online tax-preparation software—she tracked significant changes for the 2023 tax year by reviewing alerts from the IRS and interviewing major tax providers about updates to their software.
Her research builds on the deep reporting of Melanie Pinola, who has written extensively about personal finance for sites such as Lifehacker, SmartAsset, and MyBankTracker. She has covered topics including when to hire a tax pro, the biggest deductions you should claim, and what to do to make the audit process less stressful. And, yes, she’s done head-to-head tax-software comparisons. She’s also one of the 34% of Americans who actually enjoy doing their taxes.
On a personal level, Kaitlyn and Melanie have both used various tax-prep software. And they’ve both 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, itemized medical deductions, and dependent care.
The best way to file your tax return is electronically, and you should do it as soon as possible. When you file electronically, you’ll get your refund quickly, and doing so can help thwart identity theft. Need further convincing? As of February 2023, the IRS still had a backlog of over 1.8 million 2021 returns and late-filed prior-year returns.
Online tax software can simplify the chore of doing your taxes on your own and filing electronically, and it’s less expensive than hiring a pro. A few companies offer desktop tax software, but these packages tend to be more expensive and worth the investment only if you must work offline or have several returns to file. (The TurboTax Basic downloadable program, $50 at this writing, is comparable to TurboTax Free Edition, except it includes five federal e-files, with state e-filing additional.) You’d also need to buy the desktop software again each year to keep up with tax changes.
The online tax apps we recommend here are best for people who have simple returns (involving a few standard forms), as well as for those who might benefit from itemizing common deductions, such as home ownership, dependent care expenses, tuition or student loans, large charitable deductions, a health savings account, or medical expenses. Most people take the standard deduction. But if itemizing makes more sense, the software helps you fill in the appropriate forms and informs you when you need to upgrade, in order to file for those deductions or credits.
Small-business owners, active stock traders, and those with complex real estate situations are best served by a professional tax preparer. In these cases, there are simply more chances to miss valuable deductions if you prepare your return yourself, and the results probably aren’t worth the time you’d spend entering all the information.
Under the hood, all tax software platforms—even those the tax pros use—fill in the same IRS forms and (usually) use the same rounding method to calculate the amount you owe or the amount of your refund. But they don’t all offer the same experience. The biggest differences among the tax-filing options lie in how thorough their questions are, whether they ask the right questions, and how pleasant or taxing (pun intended) the experience is.
For the 2023 filing period, we started from scratch by researching user reviews, third-party reports, and software updates from the eight tax-software companies we previously tested. We dismissed any programs that had widely reported accuracy issues or user platforms that were difficult to navigate (filing your taxes should be easy, and the software shouldn’t make the process harder).
That left us with the following major online tax apps to retest: H&R Block, FreeTaxUSA, TaxAct, TaxSlayer (including the MyFreeTaxes version, when applicable), and TurboTax. To represent a range of situations, we tested each app by filing returns using our four fictional filers:
We ran these tax-return situations through the apps, and when we encountered tricky questions, we tried to answer them consistently, regardless of which app we were using. Still, the way individual platforms phrased questions or framed deductions managed to trip us up on occasion, and this threw off our refund calculations. In some cases, these pitfalls forced us to stop short halfway through the premium returns; the questions there, as in previous years’ tests, were more involved and trickier than what we were comfortable navigating on our own.
For example, as a prerequisite for claiming a deduction on a car used for business, TurboTax led us through several screens requesting details such as gasoline expenses, maintenance expenses, vehicle depreciation, and which “Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS)” we used when we first started using the car for business. We decided to leave the fictional filer to consult their fictional tax professional instead.
We proceeded with more common tax-filing situations. These are the key distinctions we considered during testing:
TurboTax Free Edition is the most polished tax app around. And most people don’t have to upgrade to Deluxe if they take the standard deduction.
Unless you already know you’re going to need to work with a CPA, or you have student loan debt or college tuition payments and want to file for free, you should start with TurboTax Free Edition. Its software interview process, support, and interface are best in class. And it does a better job than other tax apps of asking questions that are easy to understand, offering in-depth explanations for any terms or calculations that might be confusing and telling you whether each thing is a common concern or a rare issue. For people who aren’t sure whether they’d be better off itemizing or taking the standard deduction, TurboTax helps you figure that out. Even if you think you might want to itemize, start with the Free Edition; you’ll be able to upgrade to Deluxe later on if you must, such as to take the health savings account (HSA) deduction.
Since tax time can be stressful for even the most organized people, in our testing we favored tax-preparation software that offered reassuring guidance throughout the filing process. Unlike the experience with other tax software, which can make you feel like you’re being interviewed by someone who forgets your answers as soon as you provide them, using TurboTax feels like collaborating with a professional. It asks the right questions (no more and no fewer than are needed), in contrast with other apps, which tend to ask for irrelevant details.
When you click any of the numerous question-mark boxes in TurboTax’s web app, it opens a pop-up that usually answers any questions you might have about the given subject. The search function should cover most everything else, since TurboTax staff and community members have answered a litany of questions about even the smallest of details.
TurboTax also does a great job of keeping you engaged in the process and preventing you from mindlessly clicking past important details. Its entry forms switch between boxes that look like nicer IRS forms, nested lists of categories you can explore, animated loading screens, and yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions. The large buttons and fonts are also more accessible to tax filers than those in competing software; we found that the not-so-user-friendly design of other apps made an already-painful task even more painful.
TurboTax’s flow made the most sense, and it had the fewest errors, very rarely dumping us back to a top-level menu when we clicked the Back button and never trapping us in endless loops due to missing information (as some other apps, like TaxSlayer, did). In our tests, most other tax apps had runs of five or more similar questions asked in succession, or they had very long lists of dozens of irrelevant deductions or topics to click.
You will know if your tax situation requires you to use TurboTax Deluxe because the software will tell you once you’ve entered information that triggers the upgrade. You can avoid surprises and see which forms are available for each version of TurboTax on its comparison page.
We especially liked TurboTax’s Tools Center, which lets you jump to any form, delete a form, see your tax summary, and clear everything to start over—features that many tax programs don’t offer. For taxpayers who like a more hands-on approach to filing, it’s nice to take a peek under the hood.
In 2020, we upgraded to TurboTax’s live support service (starting at $89 for basic returns), and within a couple of minutes we got in touch with a professional tax preparer via online chat. They walked us through questions such as how to verify that we were getting all the right credits and why TurboTax estimated a lower refund than a different tax app did.
Paying for live support isn’t something most people need to do, but this was the best live-support experience we had with all of the tax software we’ve tested. If you’re uncertain that you’ve done everything right or extracted the most from your return, this service could provide added peace of mind. Plus, for the right person, who knows the right questions to ask about their return, a service like this one could be a smart middle-ground option between DIY filing and hiring a tax pro. But since the experience can be highly variable depending on the chat agent you’re assigned, we hesitate to make it a blanket recommendation.
TurboTax also offers a service that has a CPA or other tax professional complete your return and file it for you; this currently starts at $209 for simple federal returns. We didn’t test this service, so we can’t comment on its reliability. But the price is in line with the starting costs of hiring an independent tax professional; that can be anywhere from $220 for a simple return with just Form 1040 to well over $1,000 for more-complex returns, like those involving Form 1120S, according to the National Society of Accountants’ 2020–2021 Income and Fees Survey.
More than any other tax-prep software we reviewed, TurboTax kept prompting us to add services, such as more-advanced support or identity-theft insurance—things that are unnecessary for the majority of households with basic returns covered by TurboTax Free Edition. This means you need to be vigilant as you click through each screen, in order to avoid falling for the unnecessary upsell.
As reported in The Washington Post, when you’re setting up your account, TurboTax now asks for additional permissions, which it claims will “enrich your financial profile, communicate with you about Intuit’s services, and provide insights to you and others.” In reality, it’s a way for Intuit to use your tax information to offer you more personalized ads. We strongly urge you to decline this request, in order to keep your data as safe as possible. If you’ve inadvertently accepted and want to prevent Intuit from using your data, you can email privacy@intuit.com and let them know that you’d like to revoke your “consent for use of tax return information.” You can also manage your data and unsubscribe from mailing lists by visiting TurboTax’s Privacy & Security page.
Occasionally, we ran into prompts that required us to manually enter each line of data on separate pages, rather than entering each line on the same page, like a spreadsheet. This can be a time-consuming hassle if, say, you’re filing a Schedule C and need to report several categories of business expenses.
Some modern features—such as uploading a PDF or an image of a W-2—didn’t work in our tests, or they produced errors. The program seemed to hang while processing an image file, so we just gave up and entered the information manually. Although it imported information from a PDF, it created some duplicate entries or skipped fields with checkbox entries. That said, we had the same experience with H&R Block and TaxSlayer. (Remember: If you use the import feature in any tax software, it’s always a good idea to double-check all of the information it imports to ensure accuracy.)
H&R Block isn’t as easy to use as our top pick, but it lets you claim college tuition and student loan interest deductions for free. Use it if you have only these and a few other forms to enter.
H&R Block Free Online supports two common forms for students that TurboTax Free Edition doesn’t: the student loan interest deduction (1098-E) and the tuition and fees statement (1098-T). These are valuable “above the line” deductions and credits that can reduce the amount of taxes you owe or increase your refund, even if you take the standard deduction. If you have a simple return and you paid interest on a student loan or paid for college tuition, H&R Block Free Online is the best way to file for free.
H&R Block’s interview process and guidance are nearly as good as TurboTax’s. The software points out when some selections are uncommon, to help you avoid checking the wrong boxes; for example, when we entered a dependent, H&R Block told us it’s uncommon to report that the child has an individual taxpayer identification number. After each major section, the program provides a summary of what you’ve entered so far. And at any time, you can click the shopping cart icon to see if you’ll need to pay for the program.
The helpful prompts aren’t foolproof, though. During our 2023 testing, we realized our refund amounts were inaccurate, and we had to go back to the beginning to troubleshoot the error. Like TurboTax, H&R Block uses its interview prompts to guide you to the appropriate forms, but it sometimes doesn’t assign all of the right ones. For example, even though our fake filer had medical expenses that qualified them for the itemized deduction, H&R Block didn’t direct us to the Schedule A form to itemize their expenses. We had to scroll to the bottom of the page, select “Add deduction,” and track down the appropriate form. For this reason, we recommend always manually reviewing the list of form choices before confirming you’re finished with each section of your return.
We also ran into a bug during our 2023 testing that we’ve seen since 2019: The program can sometimes generate forms that are irrelevant to your situation, and this can prevent you from continuing until you hunt them down and delete them. In one instance, H&R Block said our fake filer qualified for the Saver’s Credit (Form 8880) and added the form to our account. But on subsequent pages, an error message said we didn’t qualify for the credit. After spending 30 minutes locked into a loop that wouldn’t let us delete the form, we reached out to a live chat support agent, who gave us a 25-step prompt to remove the offending form. But it didn’t work, and when pressed about the bug, they suggested we call phone support instead.
While working on another fake filer in 2020, the program calculated that we needed to pay the tax-underpayment penalty and generated the associated form (Form 2210). But after continuing the interview process, entering our deductions and credits, we discovered that our fictitious filer should have gotten a refund, which made that underpayment penalty unnecessary. H&R Block didn’t automatically remove the form, and in the accuracy-review tests, it insisted we fill out the form (which at the time was not yet available from the IRS). It took us multiple attempts—more than half an hour in total—to find the form and fix the problem. And unlike TurboTax, H&R Block doesn’t provide an easy way for you to see all of the forms and worksheets the program creates.
Like TurboTax, H&R Block requires tax filers to occasionally enter each line of data into separate pages on the dashboard, a time-consuming process when one is attempting to quickly enter multiple expenses—say, business deductions or various medical fees.
We contacted support over chat in both instances. But as we found during 2019’s testing, the automated help was not helpful (it misunderstood our issue), and reaching a live agent was difficult and time-consuming.
Because of these problems, we wouldn’t recommend using H&R Block for returns that involve more than just a couple of common forms. The software does, however, provide a better experience than the majority of cheap online tax tools we’ve tested, with solid in-app help explanations and a user-friendly interface (for the most part). If you have a simple return and don’t want to pay just to deduct student loan interest or tuition credits, we recommend using the free version of H&R Block.
Like TurboTax, H&R Block is also now asking for permission to use the specific information in your tax return to target you with personalized ads. Since H&R Block will still file your taxes even if you don’t agree to provide these permissions, we strongly suggest you decline.
When should you hire a CPA or tax preparer, and when can you do your taxes yourself? A look at the costs, advantages, and disadvantages of hiring a tax pro.
In recent years, tax laws have undergone major revisions that could drastically affect the returns of people who have complicated tax situations. If your tax needs take you beyond what TurboTax Deluxe can handle, instead of upgrading to TurboTax Premier or Self-Employed, you should seriously consider hiring a tax professional or getting live help from an IRS-certified volunteer, if you qualify. (In our experience, however, IRS-certified volunteers’ knowledge, experience, and personal investment in helping you may vary, especially when it comes to complex returns.) A pro can capture all of your deductions accurately, and they can also set you up for future tax strategies and savings.
A good tax professional can handle:
With a tax professional, you don’t have to do form-by-form price comparisons or hope that you fit inside an income or age cap—they’ll take whatever you have, and most are clear up-front about what they’ll charge based on your specific situation.
The average cost of professional tax preparation can be anywhere from $220 for a simple return with just Form 1040 to well over $1,000 for more-complex returns, like those involving Form 1120S, according to the 2020–2021 Income and Fees survey (PDF) from the National Society of Accountants. That could make even the cost of TurboTax Self-Employed (which starts at $173 to file one federal and one state return) look appealing. But there are many factors beyond sticker price to consider.
Having prepared nearly 50 fake returns in testing over the past three years (and having personally prepared our own returns for many more), we’ve learned that the chance of making mistakes and missing deductions increases dramatically as you add more forms and complications. And in many advanced tax situations, such as when you need to record capital gains and losses or business expenses, you’ll likely have to report a boatload of information. As Melanie added, “When I was freelancing for multiple clients and ran my own business, preparing my taxes took the better part of a weekend—sometimes two weekends, plus a lot of back-and-forth emails with tax pros to clarify some details.”
The average cost of professional tax preparation can be anywhere from $220 for a simple return with just Form 1040 to well over $1,000 for more-complex returns, like those that involve Form 1120S.
Most of the software we’ve tested or recommended can handle any tax scenario. 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 over recent years, we think more people should consider hiring a CPA or tax professional they can meet in person (or at least by videoconference). Although online tax apps mimic the process by which tax professionals interview their clients, according to CPAs we’ve interviewed, software has problematic 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: Just hand them (or upload) a stack of documents, and they can sort through everything much faster than you ever could.
Both TurboTax and H&R Block offer a service where you can start your return online and then have a tax pro review your information and file for you. These services cost about $100 in addition to the regular software fee, plus $40 to $60 per state—pushing them closer to the cost of using your own tax preparer.
This option might be a good middle ground if you want a tax pro to handle your return and you also want to save money. But it’s really ideal only if you’re familiar with all of the tax credits and deductions you’re entitled to, including tricky things such as what you can expense for business deductions. In our experience with using CPAs, enrolled agents, and these add-on services to file our taxes, the ones we hired directly were more thorough and worked more diligently at minimizing our respective tax burdens. For example, Melanie worked with one CPA who recommended investing in an IRA to reduce the amount of taxes she owed; he also pointed out when the deductions she was claiming were lower than common for her household.
But your mileage may vary, of course, and it can take work to find a good accountant or tax pro. The last tax pro Kaitlyn hired failed to account for all of her family’s medical expenses and incorrectly assigned them the standard deduction, instead of the more-beneficial itemized deduction. As is true of finding a trustworthy dentist or home-improvement contractor, asking people you know for references is usually a good way to go.
Most importantly, when you hire a tax pro, you establish a relationship with one person you can count on every year. A tax pro who knows you can provide personalized advice and help you save money in future tax years. Should you have any problems with the IRS, your CPA or EA will be available to help (sometimes for an additional fee, and sometimes as part of their normal responsibilities).
The version of MyFreeTaxes by United Way that we recommend runs on TaxSlayer’s platform, and it has a free filing tier for anyone who makes less than $73,000 a year. (IRS Free File also has a partnership with TaxSlayer itself, but that offering is restricted to individuals who make $60,000 or less and are age 57 or younger.) But we don’t particularly like TaxSlayer’s interface. The software is clunky, and the guidance is less thorough than what you get from our picks. So we recommend it primarily for those with simple returns who are willing to spend extra time puzzling over how to enter their info in exchange for totally free federal and state filing.
And even though TaxSlayer’s commercial offerings are attractively priced, starting at $20 for a federal return, we don’t recommend paying for this service, either. Unlike other apps, which provide contextual help in a sidebar to the right, TaxSlayer places the help panel to the left, on top of the form you’re working on; this makes it harder to understand the topic. The help text is largely copied and pasted from IRS publications, so it’s less helpful than our picks’ more-plainspoken explanations. And sometimes in our testing, the help panel was completely blank and we were unable to close it. We had problems with the interview process and navigating through the software, too: Sometimes we needed to click through multiple redundant screens, and when we hit the Back button, we found ourselves starting the return all over again.
An added concern: A screen at the beginning of the interview process asks you to “sign” a privacy policy to continue entering your information. This step actually grants TaxSlayer permission to use your information to send you offers—from the company or from third parties. Other tax software does this, too, but TaxSlayer doesn’t make it clear that agreeing is entirely optional; we recommend that you skip this page.
If you mistakenly enter TaxSlayer through MyFreeTaxes or the wrong referral link, and you don’t qualify for a free file, you’ll be blocked from filing your taxes entirely—an issue that you aren’t informed of until after you’ve gone through the arduous data-entry process. In testing, we ran into this issue with all of our fake filers, even after navigating to TaxSlayer’s website and selecting a paid tier when prompted. We recommend clearing your browser history and cookies to ensure you’re funneled into the correct version of TaxSlayer.
Lastly, MyFreeTaxes says TaxSlayer offers chat, email, and phone support. But during testing, the help dashboard never disclosed how we could seek live assistance, and it directed us back to the portal page we were already on or produced a blank page.
One understandable concern we’ve heard from readers is a desire to know how these tax tools protect their privacy and financial information. The good news is that the government has been taking steps to ensure that doing your taxes online is more secure. For example, in 2020, the IRS mandated multi-factor authentication for all online tax-prep tools (if you log on from a new device, you have to verify your identity via a code sent by text message or email). We also looked at the privacy and security policies for the tax software we tested, and we asked the companies for information on how they safeguard customer data. The answer: All of them encrypt the data when it’s stored on their systems and follow the IRS’s standards for electronically sending returns securely. (For more information, here are TurboTax’s privacy and security policies, and here are H&R Block’s privacy and security policies.)
The bad news is that there’s no such thing as 100% secure online tax filing, and tax-prep services are especially common targets for hackers. We looked into software breaches from previous years (subscription required) at TurboTax and H&R Block. And we found that the breaches were caused by “credential stuffing”: Identity thieves used passwords and usernames stolen from other services to log in to the tax software. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to follow strong security practices, such as never reusing the same password for different accounts. A password manager can help you create a strong, unique password for all of your accounts. Here are some other recommendations:
But password protection and encryption can’t protect every aspect of your data when you share it with these companies. The good news is that there are federal guardrails that prevent tax-prep companies from disclosing the contents of your tax returns to third parties without your consent. The bad news is that there’s all sorts of other data about you that companies might disclose, and there’s no federal privacy law to regulate that.
In November 2022, The Markup found that several companies, including TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block, sent non-tax-return information to third-party companies like Meta and Google. In response to the article, H&R Block removed the offending pixel code that sent this data. But it’s a clear example of how difficult it is to keep track of what tax-prep services are doing. There’s so much data-sharing wiggle room in most privacy policies—including those from H&R Block and TurboTax—that it’s difficult to predict how they’ll be interpreted.
Even consent can be complicated. In April 2022, The Washington Post (subscription required) noted that TurboTax and H&R Block both asked for consent to share data in ways that falsely imply you’ll pay less for the service if you agree to do so. In 2023, we saw more of this type of behavior. Even forearmed with the knowledge that tax-prep companies might try to trick us, we still had to read the fine print carefully to ensure we didn’t have to agree to their data-sharing terms in order to use the software.
If you prefer to limit third-party access to your data, consider paper filing your taxes instead, and mail your return directly from the post office. Just be aware of the main downside of doing this: You won’t have the security blanket of software approval that you’ve completed everything correctly—or warnings if you’ve made a mistake.
We previously recommended IRS Free File tax software provided by Intuit TurboTax. Intuit stopped offering it in October 2021. Currently, the IRS offers its Free File service through seven providers, including OLT and FileYourTaxes.com, which we do not recommend. But since we haven’t tried them all yet, we don’t feel comfortable recommending any of them.
Credit Karma’s tax filing service, which was a previous pick for filing a simple return, has been sold to Square and rebranded as Cash App Taxes. It has a clean interface and is completely free (though you need an account with Credit Karma, which might use your information to suggest financial services). We dismissed it in 2021 because of several reports of issues with the program. Wirecutter readers and staffers, as well as commenters on the Better Business Bureau site, have noted frustrating problems, such as missing deductions on state returns or forms that fail with no explanation. Credit Karma also doesn’t support multi-state filing and a few common forms, including for underpayment of estimated tax, and it doesn’t offer live support. Its help knowledge base seemed to have changed in 2021, but not for the better. Without clarity on what it supports or doesn’t support for state returns, we can’t recommend it this year.
TaxAct peppers helpful tips throughout its program, like suggesting you use a Flexible Spending Account to reduce your income for the next year. But working through the program is tedious. There’s no chat support option, and customer service reps frequently sounded impatient when we asked common tax filing questions over the phone. The program often timed out during testing, which customer service attributed to overwhelmed servers. When we were able to enter our data, we often had to click through multiple screens or enter a page’s worth of data on separate screens, compared with a single screen in most other apps. The service also produced an error in our state return, carrying over just one W-2 instead of both, which would have resulted in a higher tax bill. Additionally, refund amounts and filing fees were misleading. Taxes our fake filers owed were denoted in green, rather than in red or with a negative symbol in front of the amount (like on other apps we tested). Finally, a confirmation page said the state filing fee was $5, but when we accepted the prompt, the price jumped to $45.
OLT (OnLine Taxes) offers free federal returns and $10 state returns. Some of its questions gave us pause, requiring information such as our driver’s license number or state ID card (which no other program required). Its help topics were often just linked to IRS publications or were filled with tax jargon, and the tedious interface made us miss inputting some key forms, including for dividend income.
Besides having an outdated interface, FileYourTaxes.com charges $45 to file a printed federal return, even if you have a simple return.
We dismissed eSmart Tax because all of our email messages to the company bounced back. And we eliminated FreeTaxUSA due to its bare-bones interface and jargony help documentation.
This article includes additional reporting by Thorin Klosowski, and it was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.
Do not store tax documents with services such as Dropbox or Google Drive unless you encrypt the files, and always encrypt your local drive. If you do need to share tax files, do so through a secure file-sharing service with encryption. For more tips on how to keep important documents in order, read our guide on how to organize your digital files.
The IRS recommends that you keep tax records for three years in most situations.
According to the IRS, here are the dates you need to know:
Melanie Pinola covers home office, remote work, and productivity as a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. She has contributed to print and online publications such as The New York Times, Consumer Reports, Lifehacker, and PCWorld, specializing in tech, work, and lifestyle/family topics. She’s thrilled when those topics intersect—and when she gets to write about them in her PJs.
Kaitlyn Wells is a senior staff writer who advocates for greater work flexibility by showing you how to work smarter remotely without losing yourself. Previously, she covered pets and style for Wirecutter. She's never met a pet she didn’t like, although she can’t say the same thing about productivity apps. Her first picture book, A Family Looks Like Love, follows a pup who learns that love, rather than how you look, is what makes a family.
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