Best Online Tax Software for 2022 (Tax Year 2021) - YouTube

Hey guys. It's that time of year again. It  is almost tax time. This is best online tax  

software for 2022 to use to file your 2021 taxes.  You probably know me as a mom on a budget but I  

am also a former tax preparer. We're going  to be looking at three contenders. The first  

is the big kahuna. It is TurboTax. Next up  is H&R Block and the third is FreeTaxUSA  

so let's take a look at TurboTax first. You enter  your basic demographic info, then your wages, then  

your deductions and credits. You can see that the  menus are reasonably easy to follow and then each  

section is going to walk you slowly through what  you need to do to add that income or deduction.  

When it comes to adding forms, TurboTax definitely  has an advantage over the other software  

in that it does have the most options for getting  your forms into the system. For w-2s it does link  

up directly with a number of employers to directly  import your w-2. For all forms, you can also  

upload as pdfs or you can even upload as an image  using their app. While the other software don't  

have nearly as many options for uploading, I don't  find that entering the forms is usually that bad,  

especially when we're looking at something like  a 1099-INT. If I click to enter it manually,  

it literally is only one number that I'm generally  clicking in. I'm gonna have to type the name of  

the bank and how much interest I got from it.  Really not that hard. I do think sometimes that  

TurboTax tries to oversell its feature of being  able to upload directly your forms because they  

want to sound different than everyone else but  it doesn't really save you that much time. Now  

let's take a look at H&R Block and how they handle  the various forms. As I mentioned, they don't have  

quite as many options for adding your forms.  Now H&R Block does have a partnership with some  

employers where you can upload your w-2s directly  from your employer. Your only other option is to  

enter them manually. The w-2 screen on H&R Block  I actually do find easier to use than the manual  

one on TurboTax just because H&R Block puts  the whole w-2 form on one page which is just  

easier than having it on multiple pages  and having to keep clicking continue  

like TurboTax makes you do. Let's take a look  at FreeTaxUSA. It looks similar in your personal  

information and then you're gonna go into the  income section similarly. You probably will notice  

the very simple, easy to use menus that FreeTaxUSA  has compared to the other software. Personally  

I love their navigation on FreeTaxUSA. It is  just simple and easy. It's not quite as fancy  

but I would take it simple and easy over fancy  any day. So let's take a look at what something  

like w-2's looks like in FreeTaxUSA. You're just  going to click to add another w-2 and it's just  

a very basic straight form where you can enter  all your stuff in. One nice thing that FreeTaxUSA  

does have over something like H&R Block, is that  they will save your information from year to year,  

so if you filed at FreeTaxUSA last year, it will  import your basic information as well as your  

employer information and your bank information.  All those things are going to be pre-loaded into  

the software. Let's talk about some differences in  the deductions and credits section. In FreeTaxUSA,  

again you'll see the very simple menu where it  will just walk you through everything. It'll  

compare last year to this year very easily. I also  like that in FreeTaxUSA when you first start doing  

your deductions, it will ask you the question:  Do you want to skip this and just do the standard  

deduction? 85 to 90% of Americans will take the  standard deduction now. After the tax changes in  

2017, very few Americans actually use itemized  deductions so if your tax software is forcing  

you to enter things like medical expenses,  real estate taxes, all those kinds of things  

that are on itemized deduction, it's going to  be a waste of your time for 90 percent of us.  

Let's take a look at deductions in H&R Block. I  feel like on H&R Block it expects you to know what  

sort of deductions you want. I've visited these  so it has these here and if I want to add more  

I have to click on this add deduction and kind of  search through what all the other options are and  

I have to expand it even more if I want to see  the rest of it. I feel like they sort of hide  

the rest of the deductions a little bit in there.  Let's take a look at TurboTax deduction section.  

TurboTax also it I feel like it makes you walk  through all these various steps on the deductions.  

I feel like they're wasting your time a  little bit. This is one section I wanted to  

show you in deductions on FreeTaxUSA. After  you're finished with the basic deductions,  

it gives you this message and it says if  you take the standard deduction in 2021,  

you can still deduct up to $600 for a joint  married couple in cash donations to charities  

or that would be $300 for a single filing person.  This is something that is special for the year  

2021. This is pandemic related. I love that it  gives you this message because most people are  

not going to know about this and this is a really  nice extra deduction that we can take in 2021.  

Both H&R Block and TurboTax made no mention of  this. I wanted to enter $600 in cash donations  

as a couple and I had to just go digging through  and find the charitable place on both of those to  

enter that. I did want to point out that all three  software are giving you information about what  

they're currently estimating your refund to be.  You'll see it's $233 on TurboTax. FreeTaxUSA is  

the only one that will let you preview your forms  before you get to the end. The other two do not  

allow you to do that. All right, so now you've got  a good idea of what the three different softwares  

look like. Let's take a look at their prices.  TurboTax does have a free edition. It is truly  

free. Zero dollars for federal, for state, but it  does limit you on the types of documents that you  

can use. It is not for all returns and even if you  do use the TurboTax free edition, they're going to  

encourage you to upgrade to the deluxe. TurboTax  and H&R Block both do not offer any kind of  

support unless you upgrade to their deluxe option.  The deluxe is $39 plus the state is an additional  

$39 so it's almost $80 for their deluxe version  and depending on which additional forms you need,  

you might need the self-employed version to get  all of the options and that gets very expensive.  

Well over a hundred dollars. Now for H&R Block,  they do also have the completely free version and  

their free version does include more forms than  the TurboTax version. One of the major downsides  

of the H&R Block free version though is that they  do not save your information from year to year  

which is really crazy. They just make you retype  it every year. They also have a deluxe version  

and that is $30 plus $37 for state so that gets  really expensive. Slightly cheaper than TurboTax  

but still quite expensive and theirs also goes  up to self-employed versions which is $85 plus  

$37 for state, so well over a hundred dollars for  H&R Block self-employed version. For FreeTaxUSA,  

all federal forms are free. All of them and I  have not found a tax situation that FreeTaxUSA  

cannot handle. It can handle self-employment, real  estate, anything. Now there is a charge for state  

on their free version. It is $14.99 for state,  but if you use my affiliate link down below and  

my coupon code, it'll save you a little bit on  that so it'll actually be less than $15. If you  

haven't guessed yet FreeTaxUSA is my pick for the  best tax software for 2022. I do make a commission  

if you use my link but I've been using it for  myself long before I ever got involved with being  

an affiliate for FreeTaxUSA. I really do like it  better so if you want to try out FreeTaxUSA please  

use my link down below and don't forget that  coupon code. Next up, check out my video about how  

you can save on your 2021 taxes even still today.  It's not too late. Check out that video next.