this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
230 points (97.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43894 readers
978 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
For those in the US: Learn how to file your own taxes. It's really simple for the large majority of people, and usually just consists of copying numbers into boxes off a sheet your employer made for you. After you've done it once, subsequent times you'll probably have it done yourself in less than half an hour.
You can do it for free on a ton of sites unless you make significant income, freetaxusa is typically the most highly recommended one.
FreeTaxUSA is the best. TurboTax can eat my ass.
Intuit and H&R Block are the reason we have this depraved, inhumane, anti-consumer tax system. They've created the laws that make it necessary to use tax prep software. They should not be rewarded for this by getting business for that very tax prep software. Everyone should say no to TurboTax.
irs.gov/freefile
There are always a bunch of perfectly good competitors to them listed. Use those competitors. For most people it's totally free.
Indeed.
A better tip is to just maintain and monitor your finances on a regular basis. At least once a month sit down and quickly review all your income and expenses. Then at least two or three times a year do full detailed review just so you know where your money came from and went and when it all happened.
I wish I knew this earlier in life.
Think about it, what did you spend your money on two weeks ago? A month? How much did you make in the past month? What did you spend your money on?
Sure many people can give an estimate off the top of their head but it makes a big difference if you can see it all written out and documented in front of you.
Isn't the IRS rolling out an actual free filing program this year?
Yes, I'm not sure if it'll be ready by this year's tax season or not, but it was happening. Last I heard they were doing some limited runs on it.