TaxSlayer Online Review Discussion

By Jay Garmon

TaxSlayer is the darkhorse in the online tax preparation space, but it's garnered a great deal of recent attention for its slick marketing and cheap price tag. Is TaxSlayer all hype, or can it really outdo the big boys for less? We break it down in this review.

First, a word about my tax return, which I will be using to test-run TaxSlayer and a few other tax preparation Web apps. In 2009, I received unemployment pay, did freelance work, started a new job for an out-of-state employer, paid down a student loan, had a child in daycare, bought one house and sold another, and maintained a home office as a primary workplace. In short, mine is not a simple tax profile, and if these tax apps can handle what I throw at them without making me want to tear my eyeballs out, they should be able to stand up to the typical taxpayer pretty easily.

Read the full content of this Article: TaxSlayer Online Review

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I'm glad to see someone do a review on taxslayer, and a great review at that! I joined the military right out of highschool so I never had the chance to have my parents or any adult sit down and show me how to do taxes. Needess to say, first time tax season came around, and I found out about taxslayer, it REALLY saved my behind. Plus it's free for me (but after using it I'd most certainly pay the fee if I had to)!

 

Data-entry quirks aside, TaxSlayer has one unforgivable flaw: It doesn't support filing returns for eight US states. If you live in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas or Washington state, TaxSlayer is not for you.

Although I appreciate the technical details of this review, the statement above is misleading. All of these states have NO state personal income tax, so the absence of a state tax return is... well... expected.

In fairness, a select few of the states, although not taxing personal income, do tax interest, dividends, corporate income, etc. However, the majority have no state tax at all.

 

Rofl I find it amusing that the reviews that are payed for don't get a link to another page like all other reviews done.

 

TaxAct actually supports more than 1040EZ, they support everything with their free federal service. Where TaxAct makes their money is on returning users. If you want to see your past years data or want to roll over your prior year return you'll need to pay $13. Taxslayer had a free service last year but they don't have a completely free offer now. I wouldn't agree that they are 'barebones' because they require you to enter in your W-2. All online programs require you to do some basic data entry to get your tax return filed. I prefer the forms method TaxSlayer uses for common forms like the W-2.

If you are looking for the most full featured program at the lowest cost visit
Free Tax USA. They nearly always get me a bigger refund, their federal is free, and the state is only $10. They also support small business taxes for free (No LLC taxes, just sole-proprietors and contractors(schedule C stuff)).