Customer Reviews for TurboTax - Online 2025 - Investors & Self Employed - Federal Tax Return - Android, Apple iOS, Chrome, Mac OS, Windows [Digital]
Customer Rating
1
Glitchy and non-transparent
on July 17, 2026
Posted by: Anonymous
from Virginia
Spent over 40 hours struggling through a Federal plus 2 state returns. Although the Federal return process is somewhat robust with good explanations, the state returns are woefully inadequate. Two examples: unemployment income is not taxed in my state, and although it was entered as such in the federal portion, it was not captured and subtracted in the state return (I had to find that out from the state dept of revenue). For the other state, the requirements are that the Federal AMT form (6251) be attached in some cases even if federal AMT is not owed. But TurboTax will not generate the form if it's not required on the federal return (that was a 2 hour phone call with customer support trying to troubleshoot), so I have to pull the form myself, fill it out by hand, and file by mail (extra printing and postage expense, plus time). From research in the TurboTax Community Forums, this latter flaw has been reported since at least 2019 but TurboTax has never fixed it.
Last issue is navigability and transparency within the software, where TT puts a black box between the user interface and the final forms (which it won't let you see until after you've paid -- for a return you will have to pay even more to mail, because TT won't produce an e-fileable one). So when fixing errors in the final review a message will appear saying "Box 3 in Form D cannot be blank", without any guidance or link back into the interface to understand what information the form needs. Or "we calculated investment income of $XXX, what portion of this should be allocated to this state return?" without any link or reference as to how "we" came up with that particular calculation.
Big lesson learned this year --- while I may in future continue using TurboTax for federal filing, it's not worth the aggravation, lack of confidence, wasted time, and expense for doing state returns.
After discovering a clerical error in my original filing, it was a quick and easy process to amend my federal and state returns (i.e. less than 1 hour)
Pros: My employment status changed this year, I bought or sold investments
Seemed to do the job well and efficiently. But it seems very expensive for what it is and not having to use any real person help. I dont know if this is normal but ill definitely shop around next year.
Turbo tax is so easy to use. I just filed a complicated return that I compiled simply by answering simple questions, one right after the other. If you own business, property or other assets, it's simple to do your own taxes. Best of all instead of payiing some over $400 like I did in the past, I paid less than half of that!