It’s almost tax time again! The IRS has been accepting 2017 tax returns for the past couple months. Interestingly, there are a couple additional days to file taxes this year due to April 15 falling on a Sunday as well as the District of Columbia’s Emancipation Day holiday. That pushes the traditional April 15 deadline to April 17, 2018.

Of course, there are always a multitude of options when filing your taxes. While free is always preferred for Americans under a specific income threshold, we are also going to break down the top software options for knocking out those pesky taxes on a lazy Sunday.

The Best Free Options, $66,000 and under:

If you made less than $64,000 over 2017, you can visit the Free File page on the IRS site. That site provides thirteen software options on third party sites. Read each option carefully to see if you qualify. Many of the options are limited to a specific age range, state or even dollar figure.

For instance, the TurboTax’s popular software caps the limit at $33,000 rather than $64,000 unless you eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Alternatively, Free1040TaxReturn.com offers the $64,000 limit to anyone under 70, assuming you don’t live in five excluded states.

Some of these sites will also offer free state returns, but others will charge. It’s recommended that you search your state’s website for information regarding free filing options for state taxes.

The Best Free Option, over $66,000:

If you make more than $66,000 in your household, you can also just enter your tax information into the paper forms using FreeFile. Of course, this is significantly more complex as you have to understand how tax forms work rather than answering questions in tax software. However, you can use your tax forms (completed with tax software from previous years) to figure out where to fill out data correctly.

In addition, this is the second year that Credit Karma has offered this service. According to the signup page, the service will be completely free. Specifically, they claim to offer free federal & state filing, no additional fees for using the service and have a support staff on hand to answer questions.

The Cheapest Software Options:

TaxAct remains the champion for the least expensive, basic tax software at between $15 for federal filing and $17 for state filing. It’s also highly competitive (feature-wise) to H&R Block as well as TurboTax, particularly ideal for anyone that’s filing a simple return. It’s a little less intuitive for people that are self-employed or have lots of investment income, but it will do the job with a little digging. It’s our pick for the best option for most users.

If your taxes are very complicated and requires lots of itemizing, you may want to invest in TurboTax. This would be more ideal for anyone that’s a small business owner or has to deal with investments like rental property. The downside is that you will have to pay up to $120 for the right software as an additional $37 when filing your state taxes.

There are also some perks to consider with more expensive software. Some tax software has an auto-import feature that pulls all W2 information in without having to enter it line by line. Other features included in some tax software are audit-checks, saving tax info online and the ability to load your refund onto a Visa prepaid card or a store gift card.

Here’s a breakdown on costs for the top five tax software options:

• TurboTax – Federal: $60 to $120 / State: $40
• TaxAct – Federal: $15 to $70 / State: $17 to $40
• TaxSlayer – Federal: $24 to $47 / State: $29
• H&R Block – Federal: $50 to $95 / State: $40
• Jackson Hewitt – Federal: $55 to 75 / State: $40

Do You Even Need to File?

Just a reminder, you may not need to file a tax return if you make less than $10,350 per year (under age 65). Here’s a chart that breaks down income thresholds for filing. However, you may want to considering filing anyway, especially if you can tax advantage of credits like the American Opportunity credit. That will help you get a little money back this year.

Are There Deals on Tax Software?

Yes. Turbotax’s software packages will go on and off sale frequently starting in late January through about early April. Look for deals in the Ben’s feed here from retailers such as Amazon and Dell.

The Cheapest Ways to File your Taxes this Year

Ever since the first tax filing day on January 31st, the tax season has been in full swing. For the next eight weeks, tax professionals will be hard at work digging through old receipts and looking for ways to increase your refund (or minimize your payments!). Of course, the average citizen is also accomplishing the same task with advanced tax software programs.

While taxes are often dreaded by many, we decided to conduct a survey to determine how dreaded taxes are compared to other uninspired activities. Collecting responses from 1,986 respondents, we’ve got some interesting data points explained below as well as a full infographic linked here. We have also included groups of helpful tips and links from tax experts to help you make tax time easier.

There are some things that are actually worse than taxes?!

Despite the stereotype that taxes are a grueling process that nobody likes, our survey data indicates that people actually prefer doing their taxes over heading into the DMV or helping a friend move.

Of course, there are a number of ways to make the process of doing taxes even less painful. For instance:

• Try expense tracking software: Offered up by ReadWriteWeb, start tracking your future expenses online using a site like Mint.com. When combining that with shifting away from using cash, you will have a vast record of all your costs and expenses for next year. This is especially ideal for anyone that needs to itemize expenses rather than take the standard deduction.
• Adjust Your Withholding: Detailed by CNBC, the IRS offers withholding calculators that allow you to see how changing your paycheck withholds will alter your tax liability for the next year. Some people prefer to see a big refund at tax time while others prefer to use that money gradually through the year. Withholding adjustments will help with this process.
• Use Tax Preparation Software: As as tax professionals will look for any potential issues within your tax forms, tax software will also check for errors as you progress through the program. Mentioned by Kiplinger, the software also checks for all possible deductions and credits in order to maximize your return.

But taxes certainly don’t beat everything

We also asked a collection of questions related to tasks that men and women stereotypically don’t enjoy. Surprisingly, taxes started to lose out when it came to tasks like having dinner with your in-laws or watching types of media like romantic comedies or sports.

Of course, there are many advantages to getting hitched when in regards to tax time. Perhaps these perks will help alleviate the stress of tax time and make it more delightful than sitting through hours of stifled conversation with your in-laws.

• Understand what marriage means for your taxes: Detailed by NBC’s TODAY, research shows that more citizens are likely to benefit from getting married rather than suffer from the much discussed Tax Penalty. You can find a Marriage Bonus and Penalty calculator at the Tax Policy Center in order to calculate your own future tax liability.
• Contribute to an IRA, even if you don’t have a job: As noted by Charles Schwab, a spouse that’s currently doesn’t have a part-time or full-time job can still have an IRA opened up in their name and funded by the other spouse. This is ideal for full-time moms or dads (which is a major job in of itself) and the tax benefits are wonderful.
• Investigate the benefits of filing jointly versus separately: Mentioned by U.S. NEWS, the obvious benefit to getting married is that only one joint return has to be filed as opposed to a return from each person in the marriage. While there are some situations were filing separately will provide a greater return, the joint return will be of greater benefit to the majority of Americans.

Take your hand off my smartphone now!

As time consuming as taxes can be each year, the majority of our survey respondents are not willing to lose connectivity to the world to escape those pesky 1040’s. In this scenario, we proposed that they simply wouldn’t have to do their taxes if they would give up different types of technology for just 7 days.

It’s obvious that consumers are addicted to their devices and their digital connection to the outside world. Of course, the combination of technology with taxes has led to increased simplification of the tax process for millions of Americans each year. The rise of computers led to tax software and the rise of the Internet led to e-filing. Technology even allows us to track the status of our refund online, which is much quicker due to the popularity of direct deposits. With that trend in mind, here are some tech tips for tax season:

• Apps! Apps! Apps!: Compiled by CreditCards.com, this collection of nine smartphone and tablets apps will help you knock out your taxes quicker. One of the more notable apps is IRS2GO, the official app for the IRS. It’s easy to pop into the app to check the status of your filing as well as track when your refund will be deposited.
• Try going paperless: Mentioned by CNBC, a service like Showbox will take all your paper receipts, scan them and send you the digital copies for a small fee. You can combine that with a digital file storage service like FileThis in order to save all those important docs in the cloud, just in case your hard drive at home is corrupted for any reason.
• Deduct Those Fancy New Gadgets!: Detailed on the TurboTax blog, technology like your computer, smartphone and Internet connection are deductible if you use them exclusively for business. This could even include the additional cost of Wi-Fi service on an airplane, assuming that you are working the entire time.

Time for Taxes

We also asked our survey takers questions related to timing as well as their preferred tax software. Interestingly, nearly half file before March even starts and more than 70 percent favor using tax preparation software over traditional filing.

If you are in the group that still hasn’t filed your taxes yet, be sure to check out our most recently posted deals on tax software below. You should also sign up for a Deal Alert to be notified the moment that the next tax software deal goes live.

Check for Tax Software Deals on Ben’s Bargains

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What Would You Rather Do Than Your Taxes?