Tax planning can save money. Starting a return now for items you know can save time later compared to doing spread sheet calculations or using an old program.
In my circumstances, I am considering buying one now. Question is which one? I used to use Turbotax and then shifted to Block because of their 10% back on refund in Amazon cards.
Incidentally, I never benefited from their refund offer. They do not say, but it is limited to one filing and is normally used for the first one. I used it for my son’s simple one (low earnings from a summer job only) to get his refund quickly, and then found the offer did not appear when I did mine. I had a substantial refund coming.
I also found you had to file electronically, and all sorts of hard to find glitches and omissions could prevent this. The work spent finding these could be avoided by printing it out, and filing by mail.
It looks like Turbotax is more expensive with a $49.99 offer on Amazon for Delux + State, while Block is $34.97 for their Delux Plus state. Some money now can be saved by getting the Federal only and later either buying the State version, or doing the state manually. I suspect yoiu save by buying the package with both firms, but do not know for certain how much. Apparently a state version is $19.99 on Turbotax.
I do notice Amazon has a 20% back offer on Tax Act if you pay using your Amazlon Store card. This apparently does not apply to the $34.97 direct download product. Since the 20% off includes the 5% you would normally get, this gets you the downloadable product cheaper, and my state does not charge tax.
Since I can get 5% back on Amazon purchases through their store card (and other credit card offers for some quarters), the 5% refund is no longer attractive, and I am wondering which to buy now, or if there are any good offers.
In particular, since I want to do tax planning, I do not want to buy a program and then find out it is missing key parts or these have not been updated. One review of Block says their is not updated yet.
When and how to pay some items, or make large charitable contributions are decisions that would benefit from starting the return now, and estimating some items.
I believe Turbotax and pick up most items from the Block 2017 returns, but has any had any experience that mioght lead me to stick with block, even though some features I do not like.