E-filing My Taxes
Mar. 16th, 2014 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI've heard that you can e-file your taxes for free using some for-profit tax prep software, which didn't make any sense to me. But in fact if you make less than $58,000, you can.
I tried the IRS's tool to find free software. The company Robin has been using is not available to me. It turns out you will have different companies available to you based on your age, location, and income. So I had only two options.
I chose OLT.com because it's available to people of all ages. If I liked it, I could continue using it at different ages.
I like that it lets you type in cents. Plus it autofills some things with common answers. For example, when you're typing in an address, they bring your cursor to the zip code field before the city and state fields so they can fill that in for you. And once you fill out one number from your W-2 form, it will fill out the expected values of the other fields (I still had to change one, but it was nice).
However, it does make you fill in the addresses for all the places that pay you interest, which I had to look up on line because most of them don't provide 99-INT forms (because you don't have to when you pay less than $10 in interest, and their interest rates suck).
When my session had ended because I was taking too long to find those addresses, then that was the end of that.
I switched to the free fillable forms (also accessible via the above link). The forms were not fillable for me. I tried typing--nothing. I tried clicking on a box and typing--nothing. I tried hitting tabs--nothing. I googled for help--one site recommended Tabbing to solve most problems. Another recommended not typing faster than 20 words per minute. Probably I have some anti-ad software that's messing it up for me.
So I decided to just use Robin's software (because once you buy it, several people (five?) can use it). (It's the one that rhymes with Herb O'Flax. That almost rhymes with Herd o' Yaks.) One good thing is that they no longer require addresses for interest-paying entities. Woot!
But they said my refund should be $37.67 less than I thought it should be. That makes me uncomfortable. It's like when your checkbook doesn't balance--you know the bank probably didn't make a mistake, but is your math just wrong or are you forgetting something?
Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a way to look at the forms. Once you file your taxes they let you print out your forms, but I couldn't see how to look at them before then. All the totals they did let me see matched my totals except for total income, which was $2 higher than my total, probably due to their rounding issues.
Bizarrely, I decided to distrust them rather than me. I started looking up things they could have done wrong. Well, it's not from them forgetting that the taxes on dividends and capital gains are lower than the taxes on other income--that would have been off by a lot more. It also can't be because they didn't let me take my health savings account deduction (they asked me about it at the same time they asked about itemized deductions and if they were calling that a medical expense, it did not exceed 10% of my pay and would not have counted); that would have been off by a little too much.
I tried to reverse-engineer the situation. I'm in the 15% bracket, so $37.67 in taxes implies $565 in income. That is almost equal to the state sales tax estimate of $553.08, so I decided to check if that was actually selected (over my state income taxes of $0). Nope, that wasn't the problem, either.
But then I decided to google this error I kept getting to recheck Schedule D. Is it creepy that I was able to skip over five pieces of advice without trying them to get to the one that actually worked? It turns out I had to delete that whole form and close out of the software, then re-open it and re-enter the data.
But while reading all the bad advice I noticed there was a way to look up the forms and I found the problem: I had listed the qualified dividends as zero instead of the right amount. That's what I get for not giving them my account number and password and letting them download it themselves.
Now it's all fixed, all matching, and e-filed.
Whew.
I tried the IRS's tool to find free software. The company Robin has been using is not available to me. It turns out you will have different companies available to you based on your age, location, and income. So I had only two options.
I chose OLT.com because it's available to people of all ages. If I liked it, I could continue using it at different ages.
I like that it lets you type in cents. Plus it autofills some things with common answers. For example, when you're typing in an address, they bring your cursor to the zip code field before the city and state fields so they can fill that in for you. And once you fill out one number from your W-2 form, it will fill out the expected values of the other fields (I still had to change one, but it was nice).
However, it does make you fill in the addresses for all the places that pay you interest, which I had to look up on line because most of them don't provide 99-INT forms (because you don't have to when you pay less than $10 in interest, and their interest rates suck).
When my session had ended because I was taking too long to find those addresses, then that was the end of that.
I switched to the free fillable forms (also accessible via the above link). The forms were not fillable for me. I tried typing--nothing. I tried clicking on a box and typing--nothing. I tried hitting tabs--nothing. I googled for help--one site recommended Tabbing to solve most problems. Another recommended not typing faster than 20 words per minute. Probably I have some anti-ad software that's messing it up for me.
So I decided to just use Robin's software (because once you buy it, several people (five?) can use it). (It's the one that rhymes with Herb O'Flax. That almost rhymes with Herd o' Yaks.) One good thing is that they no longer require addresses for interest-paying entities. Woot!
But they said my refund should be $37.67 less than I thought it should be. That makes me uncomfortable. It's like when your checkbook doesn't balance--you know the bank probably didn't make a mistake, but is your math just wrong or are you forgetting something?
Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out a way to look at the forms. Once you file your taxes they let you print out your forms, but I couldn't see how to look at them before then. All the totals they did let me see matched my totals except for total income, which was $2 higher than my total, probably due to their rounding issues.
Bizarrely, I decided to distrust them rather than me. I started looking up things they could have done wrong. Well, it's not from them forgetting that the taxes on dividends and capital gains are lower than the taxes on other income--that would have been off by a lot more. It also can't be because they didn't let me take my health savings account deduction (they asked me about it at the same time they asked about itemized deductions and if they were calling that a medical expense, it did not exceed 10% of my pay and would not have counted); that would have been off by a little too much.
I tried to reverse-engineer the situation. I'm in the 15% bracket, so $37.67 in taxes implies $565 in income. That is almost equal to the state sales tax estimate of $553.08, so I decided to check if that was actually selected (over my state income taxes of $0). Nope, that wasn't the problem, either.
But then I decided to google this error I kept getting to recheck Schedule D. Is it creepy that I was able to skip over five pieces of advice without trying them to get to the one that actually worked? It turns out I had to delete that whole form and close out of the software, then re-open it and re-enter the data.
But while reading all the bad advice I noticed there was a way to look up the forms and I found the problem: I had listed the qualified dividends as zero instead of the right amount. That's what I get for not giving them my account number and password and letting them download it themselves.
Now it's all fixed, all matching, and e-filed.
Whew.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2014-03-16 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-17 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-17 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-18 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-20 04:30 am (UTC)Finally just gave up and went back to fillable forms - which worked fine until I got to Schedule C. They now have a nice simplified method for calculating a home office deduction, which is great - unfortunately the fillable form won't let you enter the required information. AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!
Anyhow, I have an email into the help desk and am awaiting a response. If all else fails I'll just print it out and mail it in. Good Lord! How did something that should be simple get to be so complicated?
Yours in e-filing frustration,
Cat
no subject
on 2014-03-21 03:15 am (UTC)