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Investor Junkie is your shortcut to financial freedom. We analyze and compare tools to help you make the best decisions for your personal financial situation. You can also pay for your tax prep with your refund. Is owned by Intuit, the same company that owns QuickBooks, Credit Karma, and personal finance software Mint. The Free online edition should suit you just fine if you have only W-2 income and\/or unemployment income, and you rent your home. We recommend the best products through an independent review process, and advertisers do not influence our picks.<\/p>\n
TurboTax also does a great job of keeping you engaged in the process and preventing you from mindlessly clicking past important details. Its entry forms switch between boxes that look like nicer IRS forms, nested lists of categories you can explore, animated loading screens, and yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions. Her research builds on the deep reporting of Melanie Pinola, who has written extensively about personal finance for sites such as Lifehacker, SmartAsset, and MyBankTracker. She has covered topics including when to hire a tax pro, the biggest deductions you should claim, and what to do to make the audit process less stressful. And, yes, she\u2019s done head-to-head tax-software comparisons.<\/p>\n
In addition to having a special version of TurboTax for self-employed people, the company has enhanced existing tools and help and added new functionality since the previous tax year. For example, TurboTax prefills as many fields as possible and uses AI to become smarter about individual needs. It personalizes expense reporting by suggesting items frequently claimed by various professions. A vertical navigation bar on the left divides the site into My Info, Federal, State, Review, and File.<\/p>\n
Choose the TurboTax Deluxe edition if you are looking for deductions related to your job or home ownership. For deductions associated with stocks or rental properties, choosing the TurboTax Premier would be the best option. If you have a home business or are self-employed, TurboTax Home and Business would be ideal.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The best way to get specialized help is usually to upgrade to a more expensive TurboTax Live package. After entering an income total, I moved on to expenses. TurboTax displayed a list of five common expense categories for my profession on the next screen with examples of expenses for each. I checked the applicable ones, and TurboTax walked me through the process of reporting those expenses. The other two main sections of the TurboTax Q&A (Other Tax Situations and Deductions & Credits) work the same way. If you make your way through your tax return sequentially, answering all the questions, you shouldn’t get lost, even if you have to use the Back button occasionally.<\/p>\n
Both Deluxe options include deduction-finding software, help with charitable donations and access to tax financial experts through online chat. Small-business owners, active stock traders, and those with complex real estate situations are best turbotax which one do i need<\/a> served by a professional tax preparer. In these cases, there are simply more chances to miss valuable deductions if you prepare your return yourself, and the results probably aren\u2019t worth the time you\u2019d spend entering all the information.<\/p>\n