Tax Time!

I happen to love doing my taxes. I get SO excited when it’s almost the end of January and the W-2’s start rolling in! Woot! I thought I would give all of you a handy tax tip.

If you are a very wealthy person, you don’t need this tip. You can stop reading. =) For those of you who have extra space in your bank account, listen up.

Picture stolen from here.

A few years ago the IRS started allowing electronic filing (e-file). A little while later (wikipedia tells me) the Free File Alliance got together to allow people who have a not-gigantic income file their federal taxes (not State taxes) electronically for free.  Everyone loves free!

Here’s the part where you can be tricked. I usually file my taxes through Turbo Tax. If you go to Turbo Tax’s home page you are given 5 options for filing your taxes, one of which is “Free Edition.” This makes you think that it’s the Federal free file. Wrong. They are tricky and they will dump extra fees on you right as you are about to file.

What you want to do is to go to the IRS’s website, click on Free File, and click either ‘I will choose a free file company,’ or ‘Help me find a free file company.’ If you use a link from the IRS’s page you will get a legitimate free file, and won’t have to pay extra fees.

Keep in mind, this is a free Federal file. Filing your State taxes electronically will still cost you. It’s $19.95 to efile your State taxes with Turbo Tax.

I hope this tax tip helps some of you this tax season. Woohoo!