- You might be considering olt.com
to file your 2020 tax return.
This year, they improved their navigation
and kept their pricing low.
However, it's still very confusing to use.
In this video,
I'm going to be discussing why we don't recommend olt.com,
in this complete review and walkthrough.
(soothing ambient music)
Hey guys, it's Justine with The College Investor:
Investing and Personal Finance for Millennials.
We are going to be talking about olt.com today,
and why it's just not a favorite among tax software
and why we don't recommend it.
So your first question might be,
is it free to file your tax return using olt.com?
Yes, it really is free
to file your tax return using olt.com,
regardless of your filing status,
what credits or deductions you claim on your tax return,
all filers can file their federal return for free.
The only gotcha here
is you will need to pay for that state return,
and that's an additional 9.95 per state.
So what's new in 2021 with olt.com?
The first thing is, is if you are looking
to get that recovery rebate credit,
that is, if you haven't received a stimulus check in 2020,
you can go ahead and file for that credit using olt.com.
In addition, they've improved their icons
to better direct users towards different features.
However, the navigation is horrible.
And even though the icons did help a bit,
it's still just something
that I really had to struggle and power through
to get those tax returns done.
Alright, so let's talk about pricing with olt.com,
I mentioned that it is free to file your federal return
regardless of your filing status,
plus that 9.95 for your state return.
They also have a premium edition
if you want to get access to customer service,
audit support, and then import of prior years' data.
However, as I'm looking through the pricing package here,
I just feel like this website is still from 2005.
(chuckles)
And so my confidence
in picking something like this paid pricing, this paid plan,
just doesn't seem to be as good
as something that I would find on H&R block or TurboTax,
for example, or even other bargain tax software,
like TaxHawk or TaxSlayer.
So because you can file your federal return for free,
no matter what your filing situation is,
there's really not a whole lot of pricing plans,
different pricing plans that you pick with olt.com,
really what you're going to get with that premium package,
is just access to that audit support,
and the customer service line in case you have questions.
But let's go ahead and jump into the actual tax software,
and I'm gonna show you why this thing
just does not work for your taxes.
Okay, so once you create an account,
you're gonna have to put in your information,
and they have some icons here that kinda directs you
to where you need to go,
but you're going to fill out your general information,
social security number, your name, birthday, occupation.
And then click Save and Continue.
All of this information that I'm showing in this tutorial
is just fake for the sake of the tutorial.
But you'll wanna go ahead and put in
your real address, city, state zip, all of that good stuff.
Then we can go back to Account Summary.
And then start my 2020 return.
Then you can select your return type.
Now, what I don't like about this
is that typically you're just guided through
a very easy user experience on other tax software,
but you'd have to know exactly what a form 1040 is,
or the 1040NR, 1040X.
So they do have general descriptions for them.
But I'd rather them just say,
"Oh, you're a W2 income earner.
"This is exactly where you need to go.
So before we can even get inside the main dashboard,
we're already being prompted
with the upgrade for the premium edition,
or the free edition, which is what we wanna continue with.
You're going to see this left-hand menu navigation
where you're gonna go through federal, state, review.
Not quite sure what this extension is, but it looks like
I can't even click on any of these buttons,
before getting into maybe some of this information.
Let's see.
I think what you're gonna have to do
is just click the Save and Continue Return.
And then we're gonna go through
your general information again.
(chuckles)
Just make sure that's correct, I guess,
and then go through and answer
all of these yes/no questions.
Looks like the little question mark
will pop open a pop-up screen,
to tell you exactly what they mean.
So you could find that helpful,
that one looked a little wordy.
One thing that I noticed off the bat
is that it looks like olt.com
did update their software to reflect the latest tax laws,
especially when it comes to reporting health insurance.
So if you received a 1095 form
for the health insurance marketplace,
then you can select yes to report it,
only if you received those forms.
And if you didn't then just click No, and continue.
Okay, then you're just gonna go through
your regular filing status questions.
If you need help,
it looks like they do have these pop-up boxes.
What filing status will you use?
I'm not sure, help me to decide.
And then it looks like the pop-up
is actually coming from irs.gov.
So, it's not even coming from olt.com.
And they're going to direct you to the IRS,
which can be a little confusing to go through,
especially because they're gonna use tax jargon in this.
And if this is your first time filing taxes on your own,
or you just need more guidance,
I don't think you're going to get this from OLT.
Right, then you're gonna answer some additional information.
Did you receive, sell, send, exchange
any financial interest in virtual currencies?
So I believe that's talking about cryptocurrency there.
And it looks like on every single one
of these little question marks that I'm clicking on,
it's directing me back to the IRS.
So I don't really like that,
because then I've gotta go hunt for the information,
and you can already tell, this is very wordy to go through.
That's gonna slow you down
if you are trying to make this a fast and simple process.
So we'll just go ahead and Save and Continue our return.
Another thing that I mentioned earlier that I still see,
is that you can't skip around,
they definitely have you go through every single question,
and use this purple Save and Continue button
down at the bottom,
so that you can get to the next step,
so you can't really skip around using this software.
Alright, so now we are actually getting into
the income section of your return,
so this is where you can list
your different types of income.
And it says the software will take you
to the selected items.
And then if you would like to skip this page,
go directly to the income summary, click Skip This Step.
I just wanna see what this looks like.
Because a lot of the top software players out there
for tax returns like H&R block, do have these icons listed,
and I think this is OLT's attempt
at making this a bit user-friendly.
And it just seems like they need a big overhaul
of the inside of what the dashboard looks like anyway,
so it's small potatoes, they're trying,
I don't think it's making that big of a difference,
but let's go ahead and just see what this looks like.
Unfortunately with OLT
you will have to manually add in your forms.
You will have to look at your W2,
and then look at the dashboard
and then input all of this information
down here at the bottom.
So you'll have to be really diligent
about triple checking to make sure
that you've input the numbers correctly,
before hitting Continue, before submitting your return.
Okay, once you've added in your W2, then you can go through
and add any other types of forms that you might have,
such as a 1099-INT form, 1099-DIV form,
those are pretty popular if you have investments,
or bank accounts in which you've earned interest.
If you collected unemployment income in 2020,
you'll want to input that information from form 1099-G.
Now, some common types of adjustments
that you might experience,
include having a health savings account,
or maybe that student loan interest deduction.
So again, they're putting this in a nice icon format
for you to look at.
So it does help break things up visually,
but I still feel like this is super clunky
and it's very slow for me to get through each of the windows
in each of the sections to file my return.
Also, I noticed that I haven't received an update here
in the left-hand corner
of what my expected refund should be.
So unless it's something that I input
and my W2 just isn't measuring up,
I don't think this is right.
Okay, so after you do those adjustments,
add in those different forms,
you're going to come up to the summary page.
And then you can click on the Show More buttons,
just to show exactly what forms you may have,
and then you can start those forms.
And go all the way down to Done with Adjustments.
Then you can go through your different deductions.
What I like about other software,
is that based off of what you've put in terms of income,
and then your other deductions,
a lot of times they'll just tell you
what they recommend, the standard versus the itemized,
this is just having you make that decision on your own,
which I do like when I have some self-guidance
when it comes to filing my taxes on my own.
Here you would have to know
to choose the standard deduction.
A lot of folks are going to fall into
those child and dependent care expenses
or the child tax credit.
So if that's you, make sure you just click on this dropdown,
and make sure that you fill out the form.
Now I'm using this example as a single, with no dependents.
So we'll just go ahead and click Done with Credits Summary.
And then take a look at the taxes summary here.
So I know that we are in the federal section.
This is where I feel like it gets a little confusing,
because this general taxes section, (chuckles)
I've never seen before, and it seems a little vague.
Maybe that's just because I don't know enough about tax code
to understand what's going on there,
but let's go ahead and click Done with Taxes.
I can tell you though,
as I'm going through each of these sections,
I don't have a lot of confidence that I'm doing this right.
It feels like I kinda have to guess
to see that I'm inputting the correct forms
and guessing whether or not
I should fill out certain sections or not.
So it's not very intuitive, using this platform.
Alright, so once we hit the recovery rebate credit,
this is where you can input
whether or not you received your stimulus check.
Most people did receive a stimulus check.
So you're gonna click Yes, if not, then you can report that
and request that as a credit on your tax return.
You're gonna enter your amount.
And then you're going to hit up this list of other forms.
So it's just a list of more forms
that you have to go through,
and it's not clear whether or not
you should actually start all of these different forms,
or if you just save and continue.
Now, because I'm just a W2 income earner,
and I'm just adding a very simple form into my tax return,
I'm going to skip all of these,
but if you didn't know to skip this,
you could be wasting a lot of time
just going through these forms unnecessarily,
and adding to your tax return experience, which is not fun.
Okay, so it looked like the first time,
my W2 did not get saved into the platform,
so now the refund has updated to 2832.
And then I'll go click on Income Summary.
And then it's just gonna have me
go through all the of steps again,
so I'm wondering if I can just go down to Tax Summary,
and here's where I last left off.
So it looks like once you fill out each of the sections,
it will let you jump back to those different subsections,
and then fill out any information you may have missed,
or something that didn't get added on accident,
like what happened earlier,
it didn't look like it saved my information
for whatever reason.
So now we can see a nice federal tax summary.
My total income.
Save & Continue Return.
Okay, then after you fill in your federal information,
you're gonna fill in your state information,
and typically that information
is just going to be copied over from federal,
over to your state.
And then you're going to go through all of these prompts,
and again, you can see how the mouse just grays out,
so I can't click on any of these sections
until I actually go through each one of them.
Once you have everything filled out,
then you're going to come across the filing summary page,
ready to e-file.
I just don't have any confidence
in the way that this was set up,
that I was able to understand each of the sections,
and that's why olt.com
does not make the list of recommendations
for filing your tax software for 2020.
So you really have to understand the tax code with olt.com,
and just know what you're doing in regards to tax returns.
We just found this extremely wordy, clunky,
and they were using a lot of tax jargon.
And for somebody who isn't a CPA,
and didn't study a whole lot of accounting basics,
you wanna be able to get that from your tax software,
and olt.com just does not cut it.
If you're wanting bargain software,
you're better off looking at things like TaxSlayer,
or Credit Karma Tax, which offers free packages,
and you get a better user experience.
If you want a paid feature
and you really want to go premium,
and then you're best looking at H&R Block or TurboTax.
Don't forget before you make a decision
on where to file your tax return online,
we cover a complete series
of tax software reviews on the website,
so be sure to check out all of those reviews
at thecollegeinvestor.com.