- E-file.com offers a decent user interface
for your tax software, but it definitely had some drawbacks
in terms of filing you 2019 taxes for the 2020 year.
Here's what you need to know about filing
your taxes with E-file.com.
(dramatic music)
Hey guys, welcome back to The College Investor,
the place for investing and personal finance
for millennials.
We jumped into E-file.com, that's E dash file.com,
and I have to say, it was a little lackluster
in terms of filing the taxes.
It does a decent job, but for the price point,
you really could do better with something
like H&R Block or TurboTax.
In fact, the free version isn't necessarily free at all.
It's still $21 to file your state retun.
Let's check out the other pricing tiers on their website.
All right, so there's the free version,
which isn't really free.
Then, there's the Deluxe Plus and the Premium Plus plans.
The Deluxe Plus package is $19.49
plus the $21.00 for state return.
You can file with dependents, deduct mortgage interest,
report up to $100,000 in income.
And then, the Premium feature is going to get you
those itemized tax deductions.
You can report business and personal income and then
you're getting full telephone support,
all this into the package with E-file.com.
So the price point is just under what you would find
with premium tax software like H&R Block or TurboTax.
Once you know which pricing tier you best align with,
let's go ahead and jump into the E-file.com,
into the software, and I'll show you how it works.
All right, we are gonna go ahead and get started
with filing our taxes with E-file.com.
Right off the bat, if you have the Rakuten extension
with the Google Chrome browser, I do see that there
is a 28% cash back feature.
If you remember, E-file.com isn't actually free.
You can file your Federal return for free,
but if you are filing your state return,
it is $21 with the code which tells me
that it's probably going to go up from there.
So let's see if I activate the Rakuten and then see
if I can get some money out of this.
And we'll go ahead and click to get started.
If you are a new user, you'll go ahead and create
an account with your email address
and choose a username and password.
Once your account has been created,
you're going to log into the dashboard.
Then you'll want to sign this legal waiver form
just saying that you authorize the information
that you provide in E-file.com
Then you'll start basic, just like every
other tax filing software that we've reviewed,
you'll start with your personal information and then dive
into the rest of your tax return.
So let's go ahead and just fill this out real quick.
By the way, I'm using dummy information
so just follow along.
I'm going to file as single.
Okay, so there's a handy feature called quick file.
I'm not sure what that is so let's see
if I can click on it it.
It looks like it's hyperlinked but I can't really click
on anything so maybe I'll just click yes
and see what happens.
All right, so if you already have. your forms,
it looks like you can just search for that particular form
and then it'll pop up rather than going
through a laundry list of forms.
So let's see if I can find student loan interest.
There we go.
Then I'm also going to type in an HSA health savings account
and those are the two forms that I want to add.
And then, I'll add in what I see on
my student loan interest form.
So I paid $500 in student loan interest, click continue.
Okay so, with the quick file, it feels a little backwards
because the HSA employer contributions
are pulled from your W-2.
It almost feels like we should have started
with the W-2 first rather than these additional forms.
That just feels a little backwards and then,
also, I don't know what this Archer MSA is,
and again, it's hyperlinked but I can't click on it.
I don't know if that's because I'm in Chrome
and I have to have another browser,
but I do see this learn more and it does give me
just a quick rundown of what this is.
But I'm still kind of confused why they added it.
I've added some additional forms.
Now, I think it's going to let me
go back in and add my W-2.
Let's click on that.
The dashboard looks pretty organized and I like
how you can scroll through and see exactly
what form you need to fill out first.
I'm gonna start with my W-2.
I'm gonna start filling it out.
I had a couple of errors,
which obviously were dummy situations,
but I did skip putting the EIN for the state.
If you do have an error like that,
it looks like the system catches it, which is nice.
And then you can see, from my W-2, that it has the income
that I reported and then the tax withheld
and then the refund summary here on the right sidebar.
Everything's looking good.
I'll click continue.
It does appear like you have to go through each
of these forms, but if you don't have any of these things,
you can scroll to the bottom and click continue.
The next step here are the deductions section.
You can see here on the left hand sidebar
that sections that we're going through.
Deductions is next.
I want to be guided, yes.
I don't have any dependents so I don't think
that's going to help me here, so I'll click no.
I do have an HSA.
I had some medical expenses, so let's see.
If you haven't filed your taxes before,
this almost looks like you have to fill this out
and keep track of all of your expenses related to your HSA.
And this could trip up some people.
I'm gonna click cancel.
And with the health savings account, okay,
it looks like the software has a bit of a bug in it.
With the health savings account,
if you made any personal contributions to the account,
you can click yes.
I just had my employer contribution,
so I'm gonna click no and continue.
I'm going to click yes that I paid student loan interest.
Technically, I've already filled out this form,
but it looks like, with the navigated, guided navigation,
looks like I'm going through the same information twice.
The deductions portion is done.
I actually really liked how they did that screen
by screen and asked questions;
that actually seemed to be really organized.
However, it did appear to have some bugs,
so that's a little concerning,
especially if you're not quite sure
and understand what they're asking for.
The other taxes section, this is like the miscellaneous,
although, I do see miscellaneous forms down here.
Other taxes, payments and estimates.
I don't know, this is worded differently
than what I've seen in the past.
If you have any of these, it looks like you can click begin
and start filling that out,
but if you don't know what it is,
these little quick boxes here on the side
have some information to help you understand it all.
Next section is the payments and estimates.
Federal estimated payments for 2019.
What the heck is this?
Federal estimated tax payments allows you to record payments
made to the IRS on income that may not
be subject to withholding.
If you file as a sole proprietor, partner, S corp...
None of this seems to apply in this situation
because we just filled in a W-2.
It doesn't look like we need to worry
about any of this stuff.
The estimated taxes are probably going
to affect small business owners,
business owners who need to pay quarterly taxes.
You may wanna keep an eye out for that
if you run your own business.
And then, the miscellaneous forms which,
I'm going to skip this section,
most of this stuff probably won't apply to you,
so I'll go ahead and click continue.
This is interesting.
So the state, I'm done with the Federal return section,
it looks like, but the state return says
that California returns are $28.
I wonder if that code was applied
or if my Rakuten discount will be applied.
So that's different.
Let's see, we'll add the state return.
Literally two screens of questions and that was it.
It added the refund summary for the state return here
in the right hand corner.
Let's see, if you like to add any following items, no.
Then we're going to see a calculation summary
of what I input into E-file
and you can see the potential refund in this scenario.
Once you have everything filled out
E-filing will be available in January, January 8th.
You can go back in, save your information,
then go back in and then file your return.
All-in-all, it seems okay to upload your W-2
into E-file.com, but be aware,
there were some bugs and discrepancies
and other tax situations that are unique to you.
E-file.com offers mid-level pricing,
but for what it's worth, going through the user interface,
I felt like there were some things
that were a little confusing.
If you are not an experienced tax filer,
you could easily make some mistakes that could be costly
and then ends up spending more of your time,
more of your resources and amending your tax return,
which is what you definitely don't wanna do.
It seems like it would be more advantageous,
if you're going to spend around that price point
of the $20 to $40 range, then you're going to look
at things like H&R Block that kind
of has that built-in support.
Otherwise, if you want to do something
at a bargain value, check out FreeTaxUSA or TaxSlayer.
I really enjoyed that one.
I think with E-file,
you may want to avoid this one altogether.
For more tax software reviews,
be sure to visit thecollegeinvestor.com.