Best TurboTax Home & Business alternatives for complex K1s from private equity investments

I've been through this exact situation and can help! TurboTax Home & Business is decent for basic self-employment and rental income, but definitely struggles with complex K1s from private equity investments. I'd recommend looking at H&R Block Premium & Business or TaxAct Business. Both handle K1s from partnerships and S-corps much better than TurboTax, especially with foreign income reporting and different types of passthrough income. H&R Block specifically has better screens for walking through the various boxes on the K1 and helps allocate everything correctly. Another option worth considering is TaxSlayer Premium. It's less expensive than the others but still handles K1s surprisingly well. The interface isn't as polished, but it does a good job of making sure all those complicated passthrough items end up in the right place on your return.

After struggling with TurboTax for complicated K1s for years, I finally discovered taxr.ai and it's been a game-changer for my situation. I have multiple K1s from different private equity investments with foreign income, and it was always a nightmare trying to make sure everything was entered correctly. What I love about https://taxr.ai is that you can upload your K1s directly, and their system automatically extracts all the data and puts it in the right places - including those obscure foreign income boxes and special allocations. It saved me hours of frustration trying to figure out where everything should go.

I was super skeptical about taxr.ai when I first heard about it (see my comment above), but I decided to give it a try out of desperation with my complex K1 situation. I'm honestly shocked at how well it worked! I uploaded three complicated K1s from different private equity investments, and it extracted everything accurately - even the weird supplemental information that usually leaves me confused. The best part was how it handled the foreign income reporting - automatically figured out which forms I needed and populated everything correctly. Saved me at least 5 hours of headache and confusion compared to last year. Definitely worth checking out if you're dealing with complex K1 situations.

If you're dealing with complex K1s, especially with foreign income, you might also run into issues with getting clarification from the IRS when questions come up. I wasted days trying to get through to a human at the IRS last year about how to properly report some K1 items. I discovered https://claimyr.com which got me through to an actual IRS agent in about 15 minutes instead of waiting for hours or days. You can see how it works in this video: https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c. It was super helpful for getting definitive answers on some unusual K1 line items that none of the tax software programs seemed to handle correctly.

I have to admit I was completely wrong about Claimyr being a scam. After posting that skeptical comment above, I was still desperate to talk to someone at the IRS about my complicated K1 foreign tax credits, so I tried it anyway. It actually worked exactly as promised! I got through to an IRS agent in about 20 minutes when I had previously spent over 3 hours getting disconnected twice. The agent was able to clarify exactly how to report some unusual foreign partnership income from my K1. Ended up saving me a ton of stress and potentially prevented reporting errors that could have triggered an audit.

Another option worth considering is Drake Tax software. It's what many professional preparers use, but they do have a personal version that's quite good with complex returns including K1s with foreign income. It's not as "user-friendly" as TurboTax, but it's extremely thorough for complex situations and much less expensive than hiring an accountant.

Has anyone here tried using FreeTaxUSA for complex K1s? Their premium version is only like $25 which seems too good to be true for handling private equity K1s with all the foreign stuff.

I've been dealing with similar K1 complexity from private equity investments and wanted to share my experience with a few options mentioned here. I actually started with FreeTaxUSA last year after getting frustrated with TurboTax's K1 handling, and Quinn is right - it's surprisingly capable for the price. The foreign tax credit forms were handled well, though I did have to do some manual research for one unusual partnership distribution. This year I'm planning to try the taxr.ai approach that Talia mentioned, especially since I now have K1s from four different funds with varying foreign components. The idea of just uploading the documents and having the data extracted automatically is really appealing after spending hours last year making sure I had everything in the right boxes. For anyone still on the fence about moving away from TurboTax - I was hesitant too, but honestly the K1 support in other software is noticeably better. TurboTax seems designed more for W2 employees with maybe one simple rental property, not the complex investment structures we're dealing with.