vin944 said:
The spreadsheet sounds like a nice setup. Never heard of TaxAct but good reviews there. I used TT past few years and found it easy enough to shell out for it. Since it has my history, probably will have to stick with it. But I would give the spreadsheet a try for sure. Anyone willing to lend me one of their templates?
Probably too late this year for most people, but I just discovered this site: http://excel1040.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
You can download a spreadsheet that not only has all the major forms and formulas (but not the EV tax credit form), but it's made up to look just like the actual forms so you can print directly from Excel. Pretty slick. Of course, as they advise on the site, check every formula since you're still on the hook if they made a mistake in their spreadsheet.
I just quickly went through and compared it to my own home-made spreadsheet, and got the same answer, so that's good!
However, a few things I noticed, in case anyone wants to try it:
* Initially it's not clear where you enter data because most of the cells (anything that calculates a number based on other cells) are locked. Once I started with the W-2 tab, things started getting filled in and it became more obvious.
* There's a manual override column for certain values that may be different from what it calculates. For example, the state tax line on Schedule A needs this because the spreadsheet calculates your state tax as what you entered from your W-2. But in the vast majority of cases, your actual state tax will be different from what was withheld on the W-2. So you use the manual override to fix it.
I'm pretty impressed with what they've done, but I think I'll stick with updating my own spreadsheet every year, because I end up paying much more attention to what happens to my money at each step. Plus next year I'll need the EV tax credit form.