For the last several years, the competition among personal tax preparation websites for our Editors’ Choice award has resulted in a photo finish. H&R Block has won the award once in recent years, but the top slot has most often gone to Intuit TurboTax. That said, both services work hard each year to improve and innovate, and no one should take the winner for granted from year to year—we certainly don't. Show
TurboTax and H&R Block are extremely similar in several areas, which is why they both scored 4.5 stars. They're comprehensive, covering all the tax situations that an individual is likely to face. They even allow you to enter the details of complex transactions like investment sales. Both, for example, can help you figure out how to report cryptocurrency transactions on your taxes, like bitcoin sales. Still, there are enough differences in TurboTax's favor that it is the Editors' Choice winner this year. That said, it doesn't necessarily mean TurboTax is better for you and your situation. We’ll walk you through the similarities and differences between TurboTax and H&R Block, declaring a winner (or a tie) in each category. At the end, we’ll add up the results. Keep in mind that both sites are amazing feats of website design. Their developers managed to take the highly fragmented and complex tax-filing process and turn it into a friendly, step-by-step journey. Which Tax Service Is More Affordable?The most obvious difference between TurboTax and H&R Block is price. Both offer four versions that support similar tax topics. H&R Block costs slightly less overall. Free VersionsH&R Block's free version covers:
TurboTax Free Edition covers:
TurboTax Free also covers limited interest and dividend income reported on a 1099-INT or 1099-DIV. State prep and filing is free for both.  TurboTax provides easy-to-understand questions about tax topics and transfers your answer to the official IRS forms and schedules. The Deluxe versions of both are the most popular. H&R Block Deluxe costs $29.99 for federal filing at this writing (which is likely to go up as the tax deadline approaches) and $36.99 for state filing. It adds access to live phone or chat tech support and coverage of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). You can itemize since Schedule A is included, as well as enter self-employed income, including contract and gig work. You can’t record self-employment expenses, though, as there’s no Schedule C. TurboTax Deluxe is roughly comparable, though it adds the student loan interest and education credits that H&R Block offers in its free version. TurboTax Deluxe costs $60 for federal filing and $50 for state filing. The total prices at the time of this writing to file a federal return and one state return are:
H&R Block takes the data you enter on forms and drops it into your return’s official IRS forms and schedules. It does so at a lower cost than TurboTax. If you need to report on investments, including cryptocurrency sales, or rental property, you need the Premium/Premier version of either service. H&R Block Premium currently costs $49.99 for federal returns and $36.99 per state. TurboTax Premier is $89 for federal returns and $49 per state. If you file a federal return and only one state return, that makes the totals:
Self-EmployedSelf-employed individuals who need to file Schedule C have to go for the most expensive versions of both. As of this writing, H&R Block Self-Employed is $84.99 for federal returns and $36.99 per state. TurboTax Self-Employed is more expensive: $119 for federal and $49 for state returns. To file a federal and one state return, that puts the totals at:
If you had self-employment income, especially from non-traditional occupations, you might get some tips on filing your taxes from reading up on what influencers need to know about taxes. The Free E-File Program and Fluctuating PricesWhile we're talking fees, you should always keep in mind that you might not have to pay anything to file your taxes. To find out, you see E-Filing Your Taxes for Free: Are You Eligible? There are a few other things to keep in mind, too. No matter which version you use, you don’t pay until you file your return, which means you can always try out a tax filing service and see the results before you enter any payment details. Also as of this writing, H&R Block is still offering discounts for early filers, while TurboTax is not. (Lower fees is just one of the benefits of not being a last-minute tax filer). H&R Block could go up to full price at any time. And remember that if you have to file in more than one state, you have to pay a fee for each one. Winner: H&R Block User ExperienceThe user experience for tax websites is unique. Using a tax prep website is an absolutely linear process—or it should be. There is a beginning and an end to the filing process, after all. Because the user experience can make or break your tax filing experience, it's a highly weighted factor when we test and rate tax prep software. We evaluate the quality of a tax website based on more than just the attractiveness of its fonts, graphics, and layout, though those certainly contribute, too. The user experience also includes aspects of usability, design, and functionality. On some screens, TurboTax asks multiple, simple questions. Each site has a distinct personality. TurboTax tries to be a little more conversant, and its language is more casual and understandable. In other words, it’s not quite so filled with IRS jargon. It does a better job of introducing the various topic areas and providing an ending for individual sections. It's designed to make you feel like you’re having a long conversation rather than just going through a series of data entry screens. H&R Block feels more matter-of-fact. Its tone is friendly without bordering on cloying (TurboTax is sometimes guilty of this). User InterfaceThe sites’ user interfaces are different, too. TurboTax tends to sprawl across the screen. When we were using TurboTax, we were rarely at a loss about what came next, thanks to its conspicuous navigation cues on every page. Turbo Tax flows more easily and transparently from one topic to the next and can sometimes help you forget that you’re doing your income taxes, with all the pain that usually implies. H&R Block collects personal information early in the tax preparation process. H&R Block is more compact and its screens look more like official forms than state-of-the-art web pages, though they are still visually appealing. Both display readable fonts and occasional graphics. H&R Block also provides good navigation cues, though they’re not always as prominent. H&R Block’s user experience is excellent, but TurboTax 's is more aesthetically-pleasing and offers better navigation tools. In fact, TurboTax’s user experience is superior to every other finance-related website we’ve ever reviewed. Winner: TurboTax The Preparation ProcessTurboTax and H&R Block both provide a complete, start-to-finish experience. They walk you through form 1040 and its assorted forms and schedules, asking questions and moving your answers to the IRS forms without you ever having to see them. You just click navigation icons to advance or go back. The sites do all the necessary calculations and review your return when you’re finished, at which point you pay the fee and e-file. You can even print your return if you'd like. Both TurboTax and H&R Block move through the tax preparation process similarly. There are sections, especially at the beginning, where you answer a series of questions by entering data or clicking buttons on each screen. As you move into the actual preparation process, the sites divide their content into broad areas like income and deductions. They present lists of all the topics included and use mini-wizards to move you through the Q&As. You don’t have to scroll on some screens in TurboTax. Both TurboTax and H&R Block follow the same general topic order: personal information; income; deductions and credits; taxes and other tax situations; and wrap-up. But there’s a lot of room for differences within each broader area. Their order of questioning varies, but both sites follow logical patterns. For example, H&R Block waits to ask a lot of preliminary questions until you get into the income section. TurboTax captures the same information in earlier screens. Clicking, Scrolling, and Screen RefreshTax preparation can be unpleasant, and you don’t want to waste a lot of time waiting for screens to refresh. Neither site makes you wait long, though H&R Block is faster overall. You also don’t want to click and scroll any more than is necessary. Sometimes a screen on these sites will ask only one question on a series of screens and force you to click excessively. Other times, the sites put a lot of queries on the same page and require you to scroll quite a bit. Both sites have some unwieldy pages. However, TurboTax advances you automatically when you answer a question on some pages, which saves time and clicks. Some screens in H&R Block contain only one question. H&R Block does not allow you to advance to future topics until you’ve finished the previous screens. That might hold you up if you really want to power through and come back later to provide missing details. TurboTax does let you jump ahead and create flags with notes to remind you about the information you didn’t have at the time. The flexibility is nice, but working out of sequence can be confusing. Winner: Tie Digging for DetailsIt’s impossible to see absolutely every screen when we’re running our sample returns through the sites. But in our particular journey, we found a few differences. Income and ExpensesTurboTax digs deeper in many areas and allows you to document your personal and business income and expenses more thoroughly, especially in advanced topic areas. For example, once you tell TurboTax what kind of business you have, it suggests expense areas that are common to individuals in your profession. TurboTax breaks down some tax topics more thoroughly than H&R Block does, like office expenses on Schedule C. When you're entering office expenses on Schedule C, H&R Block just gives you one blank field for a total. TurboTax lets you add multiple lines so you can list the types of expenses that make up that total. This attention to detail is also found when you’re entering deductions and credits. For example, when you’re finished entering your home energy credits, TurboTax displays a link that says, “Did I get the full credit?” The window that opens explains more about the credit, so you can be sure you’re claiming everything you can. When you come to this section of the Schedule C, H&R Block only allows you to enter a total of office expenses. TurboTax is also better overall at recording investment sales, particularly stocks. Both sites allow you to import transactions from your broker(s). Both display comprehensive fill-in-the-blank screens for each sale if you’re entering them manually (which is a grueling process; it's best to import them if you possibly can). It may also be possible to upload a PDF of your 1099-B. H&R Block supports entering stocks as groups, which can save a lot of time, but TurboTax offers imports from more financial institutions. TurboTax also provides exceptional guidance—better than H&R Block’s—as it walks you through this complex process. TurboTax imports cryptocurrency data from 18 services and walks you through manual entry if your service is not supported. You can now enter individual cryptocurrency sales in H&R Block, but you can’t import them. TurboTax is better at reporting cryptocurrency, too, though H&R Block has improved in that area since last year. TurboTax allows you to record sales; conversions and exchanges; and any goods and services you purchased with cryptocurrency. You can import your information directly from 18 cryptocurrency services, including Coinbase, Bit Taxer, and Robinhood, or enter it manually. H&R Block now allows you to report individual cryptocurrency transactions, but you can’t import them as you can using TurboTax. Winner: TurboTax Help ResourcesTurboTax and H&R Block excel at providing support to users. They have taken arcane IRS instructions and written them to be more understandable to the average taxpayer. Today, both H&R Block and TurboTax offer several types of help content. On-Screen Help and ExplainersFor example, as you read the questions and statements on each screen, both sites expand on the current query with simple explanations and sometimes link words or phrases to resources with further explanations. We ran into more pages in H&R Block that had no hyperlinks at all than in TurboTax. In other words, TurboTax is slightly more helpful than H&R Block in this regard. Both display this additional guidance in a vertical pane of the screen, but H&R Block has a slight edge here. Its content is always context-sensitive and changes as you advance from one screen to the next. If you’re using TurboTax, you have to click a link to get the written assistance to update. Sometimes the help content appears in a window in the middle of the screen and blocks your view of your work, however, which TurboTax really needs to fix. We think TurboTax’s instructions are more conversational and easier to comprehend than H&R Block’s overall. Help Via SearchBoth TurboTax and H&R Block have searchable databases of tax information. Simply enter a word or phrase to find well-written, accessible articles (usually) and, often, pages where you can enter the related information. Both sites do a good job here. The first few links typically address the specific question, but sometimes veer off into other topics or very specific situations that don't affect most taxpayers. Chat BotsThen there are the interactive help tools that both offer. These are automated conversations with bots that respond to you as if they were a real person. You can enter a question or phrase and the tool offers links to answers and additional resources. The easiest way to get help in TurboTax is to search for words and phrases, but a Digital Assistant is available if you’d rather converse with the automated system. In TurboTax, it’s called the TurboTax Digital Assistant. You open it by clicking on a question mark in the upper right corner of the interface. TurboTax's chat bots work better than H&R Block's, giving far more hits for search terms, some of which were helpful. Besides offering context-sensitive help throughout the site, H&R Block provides numerous hits when you search for a word or phrase. H&R Block calls it the Virtual Assistant, and while it doesn't work as well as the TurboTax Digital Assistant, it has gotten better since we tested it last year. You access it by clicking on the chat icon in the lower right. We typed in several common terms and phrases such as “Where do I enter prescriptions” and “IRA,” and didn’t get any helpful hits. It seemed to only have answers for the most basic questions (which it suggests), though it did direct us to the correct forms and schedules sometimes. Eventually, the H&R Block Virtual Assistant asked if we wanted to chat with a live support agent. You’re likely to have much better luck if you just use the searchable help on both sites. Winner: TurboTax Virtual SupportBoth H&R Block and TurboTax make CPAs, EAs, and other tax experts available for unlimited live support as you prepare your taxes. You communicate with them via video chat. You can see them, but they can’t see you. H&R Block calls it Online Assist and quoted us a price of $60 when we were testing with H&R Block's Self-Employed edition. For $29.99 more, we could have added Tax Pro Review and had a tax professional review, sign, and e-file our return. H&R Block Self-Employed itself costs $109.99 for federal returns and $36.99 per state, so for the site and its virtual support the total cost is $237. TurboTax has a similar service called TurboTax Live. The base price for TurboTax Self-Employed Live, for example, is $199 for federal and $54 for state returns, making the total cost $253. Other versions of TurboTax also offer this service, at lower prices, of course. Both companies also allow you to upload your tax documents to a pro for preparation, review, and filing. Prices vary based on the complexity of the return. Winner: Tie Going MobileSince at least 2019, millions of US taxpayers(Opens in a new window) file their tax returns on a mobile device. Both H&R Block and TurboTax make this possible. Their mobile apps are so comprehensive that you could prepare even a complex return with them. The TurboTax Return App is available for both Apple and Android devices. It offers the same tax topics that are available on the browser-based version, and it incorporates the same sleek look and personality. Intuit offers two other mobile apps: TaxCaster and ItsDeductible. You can enter a few details about your life to get an estimate of your tax refund by using TaxCaster, while ItsDeductible is a tool you can use all year to record your charitable donations. At tax time, you can sync that data with TurboTax. The H&R Block Tax Prep app, for Apple and Android devices, does a beautiful job of replicating the desktop experience. It's simple to navigate, has an able help system, and provides comprehensive coverage of tax topics. Screens look just like they do on the browser-based version, with a few exceptions. For example, the mobile versions display icons at the bottom of the screen, replacing the desktop version's top toolbar. H&R Block also has a companion app called MyBlock that helps you organize and access your tax-related documents all year round. The mobile apps for both TurboTax (left two images) and H&R Block (right two images) are suitable for filing most returns. All things being equal, we’d rather prepare a return on the H&R Block mobile apps than on TurboTax’s. H&R Block’s apps are faster. They have more visible navigation tools, so it’s easier to get out of the current line of questioning and move somewhere else (as long as you’ve been through the section you want to visit). The help sections are more thorough, too. The apps use the searchable help system found on the website, while TurboTax's app relies on its Digital Assistant. Of course, if you’re using TurboTax on the desktop, you’re going to use its companion mobile app, which is fine. It’ll get you there. But if you’re planning to prepare your taxes on your smartphone only, go with H&R Block. Winner: H&R Block Winner: TurboTaxH&R Block and TurboTax are clearly your two best options when it comes to preparing and filing your personal income taxes online. They’re also the most expensive tax sites we reviewed, but they are definitely worth the extra money if you want the best, most comprehensive experience. As for our scoring, there are four ties, and each contender wins two categories. H&R Block wins two categories: Price and Mobile. However, the difference in cost is not substantial, and not everyone will use the mobile apps. TurboTax wins in two categories that are more closely tied to the actual tax preparation process: User Experience and Digging for Details. When you get down to the nuts and bolts of taxes, all other things being equal, those are two of the attributes that matter most, and that's why TurboTax was the clear winner among this year's tax preparation services. Still, if you’ve used H&R Block in the past and are happy with it, you might want to stick with what you know.
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time. |
Can i file schedule c with turbotax deluxe
Postagens relacionadas
direito autoral © 2024 cemle Inc.
