 Income tax 2021-2022, free tax tools. Getting tax refunds to the max? Diving into income tax 2021-2022. We're gonna be looking at tax tools with two categories or two objectives in mind here. The first objective being looking for those free tools that we might be able to use to complete our own personal tax return. And two, looking for free tools that we might be able to use to learn the tax code, learn tax preparation, and possibly look forward in the future towards a career in taxation, either working for a tax firm or having a tax business. So obviously one tool that will be applicable in either category will be the IRS website. On the IRS website, we have our own account that we would want to be able to log into. So that will be basically on just irs.gov. You should be able to memorize it. You don't have to basically save it anywhere. It's pretty easy website to memorize irs.gov, irs.gov on the homepage. You can sign into your account. So in your account here, the IRS is hopefully getting better and better at providing information such as any kind of estimated payments you have made, some of the benefits that have gone out possibly being the advanced child tax credit, for example, and the other stimulus payments and so on, could be stuff that it's gonna be more and more likely that we'll need access to the accounts in the future, and hopefully the IRS is gonna get better and better at providing that information for ourselves and our personal tax preparation. We also want to train our clients to be accessing those accounts so they can access it a little bit more easily and possibly answer questions as we do tax preparation. So that's one tool. We also have the IRS with regards to the forms and instructions, not so that we can download the forms and fill them out by hand per se, but so that we can look at the instructions primarily here for the individual taxes, those being the instructions for the Form 1040. So anytime you have a question, that's most likely the first place you're gonna go when you're actually doing the data input and we'll actually base a lot of the content on the course that is going through the line by lines of the tax formula following the tax entry, which will be from the instructions to the Form 1040. So that's another key resource. Then we've got the software that we can use. So we have the software that you might be able to get for free and you can search for that on the IRS website by just searching in at irs.gov for IRS free file. And that is gonna be basically a way to sort kinds of software that have a free option to it. So if you yourself are preparing your own taxes and you want to do it and see if you can find free software to actually file the tax return or you're helping someone else, possibly you're helping multiple people, how possibly you can basically do that, basically guide people towards the resources and help them through the different resources that are out there to prepare tax returns to those being the free resources, then these would be some ways to organize this. We'll come back to here and go into this in a little bit more detail. If on the other hand, you're looking for free resources just to practice and learn the tax code, then you might go into some of the professional tax software and see if you can get a free trial or something like that to it to practice the data input there and possibly practice different kind of scenarios for different types of tax returns, software that's more likely the kind of thing that you'll be using in practice. So different types of software. We looked at Lucerte last time, that's what we'll be using here. So if we go into the data input screens in the course, we won't spend a lot of time on the data input screens or anything like that. But the idea of entering the data and then looking at the tax return is faster with professional software because it's not in an interview type process. I'm looking at Intuit because I work with QuickBooks and Intuit also owns Lucerte. So you might look into say the free options for top softwares. This just being an example, I'm not a promoter of Intuit or I'm not getting paid by them in any way. But if you were to look at the Intuit website, which you can basically search for in your browser, you can search for Lucerte tax software or Intuit Pro Connect. And you should be able to find it. It's a little bit more difficult to go into the Intuit website directly for some reason because it's like Pro Connect first. So they've kind of separated their tax information from their other bookkeeping. And when you go into their normal website, you're going to find mainly TurboTax there, which is the individual kind of option, which is probably more widely spread in terms of individuals versus tax preparers that would use something like this. But again, they have this free trial item down here. So you might be able to get access to some of the software. Now the differences between these softwares here is that Lucerte is a desktop option that you might be able to host remotely, but it's on your desktop. Kind of like old software used to be like QuickBooks desktop is on your actual desktop as opposed to on a browser. I believe the Intuit Pro series is as well. So if you get access to those two, you might be able to get free access to work with them. It might not be the most current version. However, it might be 2020 or 2019, but you might be able to practice with those although you can't really file your taxes with them. I believe this one here, that the Intuit Pro Connect is an online version of the software, kind of like a comparison between QuickBooks desktop that's actually on your desktop and QuickBooks online, which is a browser-based software. I still have some concerns with basically the ability for people to hack into a browser-based software, something like that with tax software because I read all these things from the IRS where they're concerned about that kind of stuff. But maybe that's just me and I'm just paranoid with it, but you might be able to practice with that one as well. So here's what the three of them kind of look like. Here's the online software that you can basically work through a browser kind of system and look at that, you might be able to get access to it if say you have a QuickBooks account with Intuit, you might be able to look at that and they've got some nice example files here that you could go in. Obviously this isn't gonna help you prepare your actual tax return unless you pay for some preparing of it, which goes beyond the free option, but you can look at the data input in the format they have here and then jump on over to the actual tax form. So that could be a great tool to work with and I believe if you can get access to that we're in the 2021, if you look at the other version, this is one of the desktop version, not LASERT, and it has a prior year version, 2020, that you could practice data input with on it, which is nice. That was pro series and then LASERT is a desktop version as well, so you can take a look at those items here. We'll be working mainly with LASERT and I like LASERT, I've been using that for a long time, so I think I'm comfortable with it, I have my opinion as biased on it, but in any case, those are some options. Now with the online software here, this is on the Intuit website, irs.gov, these are gonna be third party softwares as well, which typically you would have to pay for, but if your income is below a certain threshold, then you can get access to the free filing of the software and actually use it to file, complete the task of filing your individual software and possibly you can help other people guide them to the appropriate software that would be useful for them. So if you type in iris.gov, iris free file, you've got the two options down here below, which is the first one is gonna be guiding you through tax preparation and the next one is the fillable forms. You don't really typically want the fillable forms unless you feel quite comfortable entering the data because that's more like entering it by hand. So I would go to this first one, choose an irs free file offer, if you're gonna choose one of these irs free file options, do your taxes online for free with irs free file provider. And it's not actually through the IRS, they're gonna point you to third party software, so that's a little deceiving of language, but the government doesn't have to worry about false advertising or anything. So here we go. If you're adjusted gross income, AGI was $73,000 or less, review each provider's offer to make sure you qualify. Some offers include a free status tax return, use the irs free file lookup tool to narrow your list of providers or the browse all offers page to see a full list of providers. After selecting one of the irs free file offers, you will leave the irs.gov website. So find your best option, what will you need? So you can browse the providers here. If you so choose, you can look at all the providers or you can use their lookup tool. Now what these are, these are third party providers that are offering the software for free, but under certain conditions, all those conditions are not the same. So some key conditions that you want to take a look at, one is of course gonna be an income level. So some softwares will have free software at a lower income level than others, but there's also a big condition on the state returns. Do you need a state return that's going to be prepared? If so, you would like the software to fulfill both those needs, the federal and the state. And some softwares will charge for the state or so on or may not charge for the state. That's why this little lookup tool will help you find the one that is free for you in your particular state, for example. And you might have the earned income tax credit, which is a quite complicated credit to calculate. Some softwares may actually say that we're not gonna calculate the earned income credit, for example, and so you wanna make sure that it picks up that. Also for an income could be something that might be a distinguishing factor. Some softwares may be not taking that or may not provide a free option at least for that as well. So make sure that the software provides what you need. I'm just gonna go into browse all of them just so you can see down below. You've got your filtering options up top by the income level, the age, the earned income tax credit eligibility. So once again, that on or off will be a key factor because it's a complex credit that they might not offer for free. Active military, another one that could be a distinguishing factor. And then country of residence, state residence. Again, the state that you are in is gonna be a distinguishing factor because the state tax returns will differ. So here's a couple of the tax places that might be of potential free options. So you got the IRS free file program delivered by the 1040 now. I've never worked with them. I've never worked with most of these tax softwares. So, you know, but they should be tax softwares. So hopefully they'll do the job here but it has an AGI of 73,000 or less. The age is any and the states would be the states here that they are accepting free state, no free state tax preparation in any state. So you have a restriction on the state requirement here. The earned income tax credit included if AGI is met, military is included on this one. So again, all these types of tax softwares will typically be more of an interview type of process as opposed to kind of like, I'm assuming I've not used them but as opposed to like this kind of thing which is more of a strict data input type of thing, a little bit more fast data input. So you got the tax act IRS free file program, IRS free file program delivered 73,000 less versus this one which is 65. This one has an age limit because there's some more complications with tax returns that are over that age. This one has the states that are included here, free fed filing and then the states, no free state. And then this one, I love the name of this one, tax layer but it's getting up there, it's getting better because they have a lower AGI. So I'm assuming that they're saying I'm only gonna do it for free if it's below 39,000, age, any age, any state though which is nice filing residents, free 1040 tax return, free 1040taxreturn.com then you got free USA, 41,000 AGI limit versus 43,000. You've got freeyourtaxes.com and OLT online tax. So again, this one's between 16 and 73. Again, I've not used any of those softwares and you'll notice that TurboTax isn't on that list although I think TurboTax might provide a free option as well if your income's below a certain threshold. I don't know why that would be the case and they wouldn't have been in the IRS program other than just internal tensions of some kind. I don't know, but those are basically the options. So just a quick recap, clearly the IRS website is gonna be one of the free resources you wanna take advantage of with instructions and your account and then whether or not you're using the tools to learn tax law and possibly to work in a CPA firm or accounting firm or tax firm or to start your own business versus are you just trying to get your own tax return done? You might then choose your free tools based on that decision going towards your own learning perspective. You might try to look in to see if you can get the more professional tax software for a free trial version and look into how those are working and if you're on the personal side then you might work on the tax software that's more of an interview type of process. Any tax software though would be good to practice with.