It’s Tax Day, which means you have either submitted your tax forms and are downing milkshakes to dull the pain, or you just realized it’s Tax Day and are now frantically Googling “How late can you file your taxes?”
As of April 6, the Internal Revenue Service has received more than 103 million tax returns, out of 155 million the agency expects to get. Many of those tax returns were filed with TurboTax, the online software that supposedly makes it easy to file, but really makes you want to pull out your four remaining hairs.
Filing taxes is surprisingly complex, thanks in part to the lobbying efforts of Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, which in 2016 alone reportedly spent $2 million on lobbying to keep the tax code complicated. It’s not just Intuit, either. ProPublica reports that H&R Block spent $3 million lobbying in 2016, some of it on the same effort.
In other words, while there are few actual good guys in the world of tax preparation, if you have a particular aversion to TurboTax, we’ve rounded up six alternative filing options here:
If you can’t get organized in time to file your full return, you can pay your estimated the tax on the phone or online, and the taxman will automatically process an extension for you to file.
Taxpayers can also submit Form 4868, either electronically or on paper, to push their filing deadline to Oct. 15. If you’re serious though, do it now—you have until April 17 to submit Form 4868.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
