Sunday, 10 March 2013

2012 – 2013 H&R Block Taxes Online - Overview

H&R Block's online tax preparation platform (sometimes referred to as H&R Block at Home) is a spin-off from H&R Block's long-standing retail tax preparation business (11,000 offices throughout the US - wild!). Without a doubt, if you live in the United States, it's hard to NOT see an H&R Block office in your town.
2012 – 2013 H&R Block Online Options and Pricing
Shown below is the overall pricing for the various options on offer by H&R Block that pops up when you first visit their website. In my opinion, as was the case with TurboTax, this table shows a nice overview of the options and is pretty self explanatory/clear for normal folks like us. There are four things that I want to make sure to point out though:
    You don't actually pay for anything until you officially click "file taxes." This means you can go through the system and fill in your tax information without worrying about accidentally paying for anything until the very end of the process.
    The prices in bold shown in the below screenshot are only the pricing for filing your federal tax return. What this means is that you will have to pay an extra fee on top of the ones shown in the chart below because you are required by law to file state taxes. Don't be surprised by this!
        According to H&R Block's State Tax filing pricing, it costs $28-$35 (price depends on current promos going on) per state to file your state taxes.
        What this means is that the state tax filing is perhaps where H&R Block makes most of its money.....?
    One of the nice little perks about the paid versions of H&R Block is that they will automatically save and import your previous year's tax information to the current year. They will also auto-populate your employer details based on solely their EIN. Nice things to have, but maybe not necessarily worth paying for if you are pressed for money..
    Finally, it's a little confusing in reading the chart below, but if you have a self-employment business/income (including farm business) to report, the only option available through H&R Block is the $50 Premium version (please note, this is not necessarily the same thing as merely having a 1099-MISC from some random side income you did - more on this will be discussed below in the Income section).


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