I finally completed my 2014 taxes this morning. No hurry, I owe everyone this year.
My Turbo Tax experience was about normal.
I downloaded the free upgrade to Premier and later downloaded my second state.
I remembered to do the non-resident state first as recommended many years ago by Turbotax. I was asked for information I know was available in the 2013 return I imported but this is a normal aggravating ongoing bug.
I completed the second state (full year resident) and went through all reviews. Turbotax said everything was fine but I knew the number for the resident state tax for was wrong and printed some of the forms to do an idiot check.
I use the questions method and it never asked any questions about taxes paid to another state on income received from another state. I fixed that by creating the proper form for the resident state.
During the idiot check I found some idiot had entered on the fed form the resident state taxes paid amount as a refund. When I corrected this I had to force the change to flow to the state tax returns.
After one of the updates I was led to the file your taxes screen even though I wasn’t any way near done.
I have found in the past that if you have everything ready and sit down for a few hours and do all returns at once it works a little better. You should still NEVER accept the bottom line if it doesn’t look right.
The software asked me a few times about health care insurance and suggested I go to the healthcare.gov to see if I could get a better deal.
Turbotax offered to let me buy an Amazon gift certificate with my refund even though I had no refund due.
Bottom line:
If I didn’t have any previous experience with my filing situation and accepted the Turbotax returns I would have sent the resident state much more than needed.
It cost a lot (IMHO), between the original software, one additional state and e-file fees about $150.
Turbotax accepted my state returns but I have no confirmation they were accepted by those state or if someone has filed for me. The fed return was accepted immediately so I guess that means no one stole my identity and filed for a refund.
In the past I have resisted the idea of doing taxes “in the cloud” but have since realized the returns are “in the cloud” somewhere anyway.
Does anyone who uses taxact know if you can file two state returns. The website is vague. Same question for freetaxusa.
Update: the non-resident state return has been accepted.
Taxes are done for this year and I am thinking about withholding amounts or in the non-resident case prepayments. I have always thought based on the unpredictability of overtime in the current job that if I get back or pay <$1000 total to the feds and resident state I did pretty good.
PO
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