The Money Mustache Community

Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Taxes => Topic started by: prettypaperwork on March 16, 2017, 09:33:50 PM

Title: Did you use Credit Karma to do your taxes or...
Post by: prettypaperwork on March 16, 2017, 09:33:50 PM
Did you decide not to because __________?

There's a reporter, Laura Saunders,who is doing another story on Credit Karma getting in on the tax prep industry.  Feel free to contact her at

laura.saunders@wsj.com

Title: Re: Did you use Credit Karma to do your taxes or...
Post by: kpd905 on March 17, 2017, 05:42:47 AM
I saw way too many people on these forums saying they had errors and the numbers weren't coming out the same as Turbo Tax, Tax Act, etc.  Figured I would let them work out the issues the first year.  I didn't feel like screwing up my taxes just to save $30.
Title: Re: Did you use Credit Karma to do your taxes or...
Post by: tarheeldan on March 17, 2017, 05:45:14 AM
I skipped this year, there were issues dealing with taxable brokerage account activity.
Title: Re: Did you use Credit Karma to do your taxes or...
Post by: 2Birds1Stone on March 17, 2017, 06:45:44 AM
Too many errors and discrepancies were found during the process for me.

I was not comfortable trusting them, ended up filing with TurboTax
Title: Re: Did you use Credit Karma to do your taxes or...
Post by: downtownshuter on March 22, 2017, 07:58:32 AM
I tried. Had a few sections where I wasn't clear how it was working and the refund was not adjusting as I expected it to as I entered new information. Also it required me to itemize a charitable deduction when I shouldn't have needed to (you only itemize if one specific item is $500 or more, not if your total donations are $500 or more) and then it double counted that deduction and I couldn't delete the itemized line. A few quirky things like that.

In the end it said I would get a refund of ~$2,850. Then I did everything myself and got a refund of $4,350. The worst thing is CK doesn't show you your forms or schedules so I can't track down the discrepancy. I contacted CK customer service about a couple of my issues, including whether or not I could see my actual Form 1040, and they gave me some stock answers that were not helpful. I was excited about this because I love CK for credit monitoring. Unfortunately this product isn't quite ready for prime time yet.

(I think the biggest difference is coming from CK's treatment of my HSA distribution. On CK's HSA form there was no section for "Qualified medical expenses paid using HSA distributions". So I believe they were taxing me on my distribution and adding the 20% penalty. But that doesn't totally resolve the discrepancy)