So you just got your W2 tax form and you are ready to e-file your tax return. Then you go around the Internet looking for a site to do your taxes on. When you find the site, you go through all of the entering of personal and financial information for yourself, and everybody else in your family. Then when you come to the final page, you are informed that it is going to cost you twenty dollars to file your taxes, and you immediately begin to wonder what happened to the free e-file.
At this point you have to understand that the website that you used to prepare the tax forms is there to make things easier for you, and those types of sites are not free to use. This is not a case where the Internet is trying to rip you off.
Many people get the free efile option, which is offered by the IRS, confused with the offerings of the tax preparation company that they go through. Using a tax preparation site is a good idea for people do not know very much about how to file taxes, and what numbers go into the correct box on the 1040 form.
That is why there are tax preparation sites. Not only do they offer audit protection for your protection, but they even point you in the right direction when it comes to getting the most out of your tax return. Do you think that using a twenty dollar service in order to be aware of an extra thousand dollars that the government owes you is a good investment? Common sense says yes, but some people still think it is a rip off to use tax preparation websites.
If you are comfortable with all of the various tax forms, and information that goes on a tax return, there is nothing stopping you from submitting your tax return paper directly to the IRS for free. The people who do it this way are usually the ones that keep up with the current tax laws, and they are also the ones who do taxes for other people.
The moral of the story here is that at tax time, there are 2 things to consider when choosing how you are going to actually file your taxes. The tax preparation fee is what you pay the person who fills the paperwork, and/or shows you how to do it. This is almost the same as having an accountant, and you would not want your accountant to work for free, would you? Then there is the way you file, which filing is free, but since you go through a tax preparation agency, you also are paying for bank products. These bank products are things like a rapid refund, where you get your money the same or next day.
Though it can be enticing to opt for the rapid refund, you have to ask yourself, if it is really worth paying an extra three hundred dollars, just to have the refund a couple of days sooner than it would normally come. If you are smart, you will use a combination of tax preparation services, and free e-file services to file your taxes.
There is nothing stopping anybody from going through the tax preparation service, just to see how much you are going to get, and then go back and fill out the paperwork and submit it to the IRS, yourself. Then the tax return will be in your bank account on the following Friday morning, if there are no problems. If problems come up, then you are on your own, if you filed it by yourself, but if you used a tax preparation service, they will deal with the IRS for you.