- For years, Jackson Hewitt has made tax filing available
through its Walmart locations
and now with some improvements, it's offering some online
tax software so that you can do your taxes from home.
But truth be told, this is a pass for us.
We're gonna tell you why in this complete video review
and walk through of the Jackson Hewitt tax software.
(slow music)
Hey guys, welcome back to The College Investor,
investing and personal finance for millennials.
If you are getting ready to file your 2019 taxes in 2020
and you're considering Jackson Hewitt, then you might be
familiar with their ability to do your taxes via Walmart.
You can also sign up for this Tax Pro From Home initiative
that they have.
They actually have several options for filing your taxes,
but in this video we're going to exclusively focus
on filing your taxes online using their tax software.
Let's go ahead and talk about their pricing.
Okay, so there's three versions
when it comes to their price points.
There's the basic deluxe and premiere.
If you have income up to $100,000
and you don't have any children, then you could file
your taxes for free using Jackson Hewitt.
Now any student loan interest that you may have earned
or any dependence earned income tax credit,
that will bump you up to the deluxe edition,
which is gonna run you around $67 total.
It's 29.99 to file your federal return and then 36.99
to file your state return using the deluxe option.
And then if you need to itemize, if you're a landlord,
if you have any self employment income,
then you'll wanna look at the premiere option.
The premier option is gonna be 49.99 to file your
federal return and 36.99 to file your state return.
Okay, so those are the pricing options.
Let's go ahead and jump into the tax software
and I'll show you how it works.
So Jackson Hewitt has like five different options
to file your taxes with them.
In fact, on their website it says you can file it
in the office at Walmart.
You can do the Tax Pro From Home version
or you can just do it online, which is interesting
that they profiled these three options,
but then they don't actually highlight the online version.
In fact, you have to go up here to login
and click on online filing first.
So, let's go ahead and sign up now.
Go ahead and fill in your email address, username
and password and I'll meet you inside of the dashboard.
You should have been asked some security questions
and as I was going through this exercise I noticed
and now that we're inside of the dashboard,
this looks identical to Liberty Tax and 1040.com.
So, between the three you're really getting
the same software, the same interface.
So in this case you'd probably just wanna go
with the cheapest option.
Let's go ahead and begin.
You're gonna fill out your tax profile or information.
I'm gonna show you what the single version
looks like with a W-2.
And again, they're going to ask you
if you want to add your state return.
In most cases this is included.
So yes, I'm going to add it and then click save.
And then let's go ahead and jump into federal taxes.
This dashboard is pretty bare bones.
Inside the federal tax portion,
you're going to hit up these different sections,
income, dependents, deductions and credits,
healthcare, other tax situations.
Then review and then go into your state return.
If ever you need any help, you're going to click
on this help option here, up in the top menu.
And then this is all that they have.
In fact, this looks even more bare bones than what 1040
and Liberty Tax offered because at least I had the option
to email and it looks like here,
I don't even have the option to email.
So let's say you had some dividend interest
or some interest from a bank.
So that would be the 1099, dividend income.
There it is.
So add the form, and then if you had the 1099-DIV form,
then you would click next
and then start filling in that information.
I'm gonna click cancel back out of this.
Let's go back to the federal taxes and get started.
And then click on yes, if you have a W-2
and then the thing here is there is no option to import
your W-2, you're going to have to manually update and add
this information yourself, which could leave room for error.
I'll go ahead and fill this out.
Okay.
It did look like it caught an error
where I didn't fill out what state in the state EIN number?
So, good news there is that if you do skip over something,
it does flag it.
So now that I've filled out my W-2,
I don't have another one to add.
You have two different options here.
You can either click, I'm finished with the income portion
and then continue to the rest of the sections.
Or you can have Jackson Hewitt guide you through
all of the sections by asking you questions.
Also, one thing that wasn't easy to understand
from the beginning is that each of these little breakdowns
are the sections that they will guide you through.
So if you've not filed your taxes before on your own
or you're kind of a newb to this, it would be helpful
for them to just have a quick help guide
or some sort of statement here that said,
hey, these are the next questions we're gonna ask you
about with your income.
If you have any of these,
tell us about your interest in dividends.
And so you can kind of do a quick run through
of which of these sections you could potentially fill out.
If you don't have any of these,
then you can click finished with income
and move on to the next section.
So no, I don't have any dependents to claim.
And then we move on to deductions and credits.
So, let's say you had student loan interest
that you paid on, we'll go ahead and answer these questions.
Okay, so here's the thing.
I said that I had paid on student loans in 2019.
Now they're asking how much the interest I paid on that,
you would get this from the form 1098-E.
Nowhere on here in this tax software dashboard,
does it tell me that I get this number from the 1098-E form.
So, if you haven't filed your taxes before,
then I'd be confused as to where to get this information.
If you have filed it, then you could just go ahead
and type in, I paid $500 in interest, click next,
click save, and then you'll see your federal refund
and your state refund potential amount up here
in the top of the menu navigation.
So let's move on.
And what I like about that is that it stays sticky
at the top of the screen.
So I always see it at all times.
And then you can see here I've added that student loan
adjustment though it still doesn't tell me
what form it's coming from.
And then you can say, finish with deductions and credits,
if you don't have to go through any of these other sections.
Then we'll go into healthcare.
And then other tax situations.
Okay, the federal return is ready to file.
You can click finished with federal and then use
that same information and apply it to your state return.
So I'll go ahead and say, add use tax information.
I don't owe any use tax.
Save,
and then continue.
And then what I do like about this is that you get to see
what the preview of your return looks like,
how those forms would actually be submitted to the IRS.
So what they do is they create a PDF version
and then you can use that to review and then file.
All right, so then it downloads as a PDF.
And here's what it looks like.
This is all the information that I filled out.
And then you could kind of scroll
through here and make sure everything looks okay.
Obviously you'll have to read between this watermark here.
But going back,
you'll click on file now and continue filing.
Click that button three times before you get to
an upsell for the audit assist and ID theft restoration.
This is the exact same stuff that you would see
in 1040.com or Liberty Tax.
Exact same information and the same price.
So I'm gonna click on no thanks,
click accept.
And here we go.
So it is 66.98 to file your taxes online
with Jackson Hewitt.
I did something very simple.
I just had a W-2, I did student loan interest
and that's pretty much it.
And that was $67.
Now for the same tax software,
you could get this same experience for $25 with 1040.com.
So, it's up to you.
You can click on this, eCollect where it's deducted
from your refund or you can click on credit or debit
and then enter your payment information
and then you're done.
And that's how you file your taxes with Jackson Hewitt.
For the 2020 tax season, Jackson Hewitt just falls short
on our list of recommendations.
In fact, we think this is a pass.
The tax software is pretty much identical
to 1040.com and Liberty tax.
And yet Jackson Hewitt is charging a lot more
if you have more than just that earned income tax credit.
In fact, that is part of the deluxe option.
They're gonna charge you like 66, 67 bucks to file
just a simple, what I would consider simple
and normal tax filing situations.
You'd be much better off using something
like FreeTaxUSA or TaxSlayer,
if you want something middle of the road.
Even better option would be to go with the free version
with Credit Karma that has a better user interface.
But if you want something premium with more bells
and whistles, try looking at Turbo Tax or H&R Block.
For this year, Jackson Hewitt just doesn't make the cut.
For more tax software reviews,
be sure to visit thecollegeinvestor.com.