WaPo’s Shira Ovide declares, “Surprise! The federal government made a website that doesn’t stink.” She is, alas, an easy grader.
Government websites have a mostly deserved reputation for being terrible and driving us nuts.
So it was a pleasant surprise to try IRS Direct File, a new (and politically controversial) option to file a tax return online directly with the Internal Revenue Service. Direct File works like TurboTax, but it’s run by the government and free to file a federal tax return.
Most people aren’t eligible to file their taxes with Direct File. I thought I could, was rejected partway through and instead used TurboTax.
Direct File was not perfect. Still, I liked using the IRS website — and I definitely prefer it over TurboTax, which annoys me with constant nags for more money and my private data.
So, while she definitely prefers the IRS website to TurboTax, she was forced to use the latter because the former rejected her halfway through the process. Alrightee then!
The first thing to know about Direct File is that it’s a trial project. And you probably can’t use it.
That’s exactly what I’m looking for in a government website!
Just going through Direct File’s seven online screens of eligibility checklists and doing an online identity verification almost made me quit.
Another sign of a non-sucky website!
But once I did start my tax return, Direct File felt pleasantly similar to TurboTax, which I have used for years.
This would be the site that she definitely does not prefer.
Direct File guides you through yes or no questions about your income and potential tax breaks. You can chat online for help, too.
There are far fewer questions than there are in TurboTax because Direct File only permits use by people who have simple tax returns.
Which is to say, the people for whom filing was already ridiculously easy?
There were things I didn’t like. Unlike TurboTax, which had a digital copy of my W-2 tax form and let me pull in digital records from my investment accounts, I had to type into Direct File details like my income and interest payments.
That took more time and left room for me to mistype numbers.
So, let me get this straight. This IRS, which is the government agency that should definitely have my W-2, does not allow me to access my W-2 on this website, which both doesn’t suck but won’t allow me to use it? And TurboTax, a private company whose software is decidedly less preferable to the aforementioned non-sucky government website, does? Got it.
The biggest problem was that part way through, Direct File told me that I couldn’t actually file my federal tax return with the site. Ugh.
Ugh, indeed! Why, I would say that this sucks.
I missed a detail in the eligibility checklist that you can’t use Direct File if you had more than $1,500 in interest income last year. I did. I was also nixed because I paid into a Health Savings Account, a fund through my employer to help pay for medical expenses.
So, on the one hand, I guess that Ovide could have figured that out by reading the checklist. But, then again, you’d think a non-sucky website run by the people in charge of the tax code would run you through the checklist right at the beginning of the process.
I went through the whole Direct File process anyway to see how it went. And again, I was pleasantly surprised that the website was easy to use with clear questions and helpful explanations. And did I mention that it’s free? (If you can use it.)
You get what you don’t pay for, it would seem.
You can also set up an account on the IRS Free File Fillable Forms website. Unlike Direct File or TurboTax, you need to go through the tax form yourself line by line. (Read more here about free or low-cost tax filing options.)
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
A colleague, Monica Rodman, found it confusing to use Free File Fillable Forms. Monica was so unsure of the results that they double checked the work with TurboTax. The whole process took 12 hours!
Monica gave up and had a good experience using Free Tax USA — which charged nothing to file a federal return and $15 for a state return.
So, Rodman has a BA from the Unnversity of Southern California with a 3.5 GPA and has been presumably filing taxes for a decade. She has a pretty simple tax situation, or else she wouldn’t be eligible for the pilot program. And she found it so confusing that she went ahead and used TurboTax, anyway? And it took her 12 hours to do all this?
I don’t know what it would take for a website to suck in Ovide’s world.
Because I have a business (this here website), part ownership of a farm (long story), and various other complications, I’ve been using an accountant to file my taxes for 15 years or more. It’s more expensive than it ought to be, but my taxes are more complicated than most. But folks who simply have a salary, a home mortgage, retirement accounts, health savings accounts—all encouraged by the tax code!—and the like really should be able to file cheaply and quickly.
Indeed, the IRS should simply fill out the tax forms for these people—they have the W-2s, 1099s, and such, after all—and allow people to review and acknowledge or go through the trouble of building their own return. That, in my estimation, would be a government website that didn’t suck.
