- You know, it, you love it,
you've seen the ads, you know the name.
H&R Block is back with another updated tax software
for the 2021 tax return season.
So, if you are looking to file your taxes online,
stick around.
We have the scoop on what's been updated
with their tax software
and why this is still
one of the easiest tax software platforms to use.
(calming music)
Hey guys, it's Justine with The College Investor:
Investing and Personal Finance for Millennials.
If you are interested in doing your taxes DIY,
look no further than H&R Block.
You know the name,
it's been around a long time
and with good reason, they have the credibility
behind their name
because they take the time to enhance their tax software
and their user experience.
Each and every year, there's been a few minimal updates
for this tax season.
So, let's go ahead and hop into
whether or not H&R Block is free.
All right, so you can actually get
free federal and state filing
if you meet certain requirements.
If you're in the following situations, including:
unemployment income, W-2 income,
Social Security income,
people with student loan interest,
and people claiming the child tax credit,
if any of these situations apply to you, one or all,
you can actually file your federal and state returns
for free using H&R Block.
Now, the one category that's not free
and included in that free package
is the Health Savings Account contributions.
If you have a Health Savings Account
and you want to report those contributions,
you have to upgrade into one of their paid packages.
All right, so what's new for this year with H&R Block?
Now, they already have a really great product.
So, the upgrades really were kind of minimal,
but really cool as well.
So, one thing that we found in our testing
is that you can take a snapshot
of one of your tax documents with your phone,
upload it into H&R Block system,
and then you'll see that exact document
when you go onto your desktop to file your taxes.
So, there does seem to be seamless integration
between using your phone, and using your laptop,
and uploading those documents.
Everything seemed to be working just as it was advertised.
There was also a better functionality
with the knowledge articles.
If you get kind of stuck in the tax jargon,
H&R Block does a really good job
of making sure that articles
and how things work with your tax return
just really accessible and easy to read.
This past year, we also saw a lot more gig workers,
side hustlers, people who were working odd jobs on the side.
So, if you are worried about whether or not
you have to purchase the Self-Employed package,
which is the highest paid pricing package
that H&R Block offers,
if you have less than $5,000 in business expenses,
you can actually qualify for the Premium package,
which is a really...
It's really great to see H&R Block value those gig workers
who maybe are just doing things on the side
that don't have a lot of business expenses along with it.
Okay, let's go ahead
and walk through what their pricing options are
to see what might work best for your situation.
So, as I said,
if you had any of those qualifying free requirements,
then you can actually do your taxes for free
inside of H&R Block.
Now, they're going to say
there's this Basic package for $70
plus $40 per state filing.
But at the time that I'm recording this video,
we actually haven't seen that seasonal discount
and promotional period go into effect.
Check back in January of 2022
when you'll be able to see
the deepest discount available for H&R Block.
The next package is the Deluxe package
and we found that this pricing tier
actually wasn't that great of a deal
because there are other tax software available
that has all of those additional benefits for less cost.
So, if you have a W-2 and, let's say, an HSA as well,
then you might be better off
looking at tax software like TaxSlayer instead.
The next package is Premium for 160.
This really helps for those people who are investors
or have rental income.
And then of course, if you run your own business,
Self-Employed for 195.
But again, these prices are probably,
most likely going to change by the time we roll into January
of the new year.
So, check back to make sure
that you get the deepest discount available.
Okay, so if you're still interested in H&R Block,
let's hop into their dashboard.
I wanna show you some of the notable features
and drawbacks of their software.
Okay, let's go ahead and start off
with some of the notable features about H&R Block.
First of all, there's really easy navigation.
So, you'll see the major categories
of your federal tax return up here at the top
and you can toggle in between income, deductions, credits,
and then taxes,
and then, of course, your basic personal info.
But I'm gonna go back over here to income
and show you something that helps expedite
this whole process of filing your own taxes.
So, I got a 1099-DIV Form from TD Ameritrade
that I need to include in my tax return.
So, if I go to Income and add another source of income,
I can go through this list,
find the Interest and Dividends form,
and then I can click...
Let me make sure that it is truly a 1099-DIV.
Yes, okay.
So, let's go ahead
and add that in.
So, what's really cool is that H&R Block
has partnered with some of these financial institutions
to make it easier to import some of these documents.
So, I'm gonna do an import from TD Ameritrade.
They're going to need your account number
and document ID,
and they give you some helpful tips
of where to find this information.
Okay, so I just had to include the account number
and the document ID number,
which was already on my form that I got from TD Ameritrade.
And now, I can see that it's already imported
everything for me, which is fantastic.
I love this as a feature
as part of H&R Block's tax software.
Okay, so as I'm going through some of this information
from TD Ameritrade,
H&R Block is asking about this filing requirement
and what I like about how they...
I know nothing about this FATCA filing requirement.
What I like about how they've evolved
over the past couple of years
is that they make sure that their knowledge base articles
are quick and to the point.
I'm not a tax professional,
they really make this information accessible to the layman
and I find that these types of articles are very helpful.
All right, so as you can see,
it's pretty easy to upload
some of those additional income forms
that you might have from your investing accounts.
Also, it has this cool feature up here
where you can access live chat tax support.
So, it also offers some tax guidance,
but it's not tax advice,
but at least it would be helpful
to have a little bit of kind of guidance
if you ever get lost.
Some notable drawbacks that I saw when testing H&R Block
is that they don't natively integrate
with brokerages or crypto exchanges
to calculate capital gains.
And also, another thing that I saw
is that their audit support costs an additional $20.
Now, H&R Block is already on the high end of
tax software
in terms of how much you're going to spend.
So, it feels like there should be a value add
instead of a standalone product.
And then another thing, because I'm self-employed,
I didn't see an area
where H&R Block could calculate the max contribution
for my self-employed retirement account.
So, that won't affect all filers,
but this could be something that if you're self-employed,
that actually is a big deal.
Otherwise, I found this software pretty easy to use
just by simply navigating
through the different subsections of my return,
and then adding in different buckets.
If you have a lot of different things going on,
such as you run a business,
you have 1099 Forms, HSAs,
H&R Block is really good
about walking you through all the steps.
So, it does take some time.
However, it's very straightforward and simple,
and I think H&R Block could make your short list this year
for good tax software in filing your tax returns.
All right, so final thoughts.
Is H&R Block a contender for filing your taxes?
And it should definitely be on your short list
if you can qualify for the free version.
Yes, definitely, duh.
Everything is for free.
Also, gig workers and investors
will see a lot of value and benefit
from the Premium package.
However, if you fall into that Deluxe package
that I was telling you about earlier,
you might be better off looking at a tax software
like TaxSlayer or FreeTaxUSA,
which is going to give you all of those options,
but at a cheaper rate.
Now, if you are still unclear
of what tax software you want to use,
we have complete reviews
on all of the best tax software out there available
at thecollegeinvestor.com.
Be sure to check those out before you file your taxes,
and we'll catch you in the next video.