Tax Software Discrepancy: H&R Block vs TurboTax - $500 Difference?

Been there, done that, got the audit letter to prove it! Last year I had a $680 difference between two tax programs. Turns out they were handling my student loan interest differently. One was applying it as an adjustment to income while the other was treating part of it as a credit. I spent hours on hold with the IRS trying to figure it out. What I learned: these programs ask questions in different ways and sometimes interpret your answers differently. Go through both step by step and look for where they diverge - usually it's in how credits are being applied or deductions are being categorized.

Have you checked if both software programs are looking at the same filing status? It's like going to two different doctors and getting two different diagnoses - you need to make sure they're working with the same patient information. Sometimes one program assumes Head of Household while another defaults to Single, and that alone can be worth hundreds in tax differences.

I had this exact issue on March 15th when I was preparing my parents' taxes. H&R Block showed $430 more than TurboTax, and I spent April 2nd through April 8th trying to reach someone at the IRS to explain the discrepancy. Complete waste of time with their phone system. Finally used Claimyr (https://www.claimyr.com) on April 9th and got through to an actual IRS agent in under 30 minutes. The agent confirmed it was likely due to how education credits were being applied and walked me through which forms to check. Saved me days of redial frustration and helped identify the correct calculation.

According to the IRS website's comparison tool (https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/choosing-a-tax-professional), different software platforms can produce different results based on how they interpret tax law. I've seen this especially with education credits like the American Opportunity Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit. TurboTax tends to be more aggressive with certain deductions while H&R Block is sometimes more conservative. You should download the actual tax forms from both and compare line by line to see where the difference is occurring.

Could it be that one software is including state taxes and the other isn't? Or maybe one is calculating some kind of education credit that the other missed? Have you gone through each section step by step to see where the difference is? Did you check if both are using the same tax year updates?

I solved a similar mystery last month! 😂 Had a $750 difference between FreeTaxUSA and TurboTax. Turns out I accidentally entered my 1098-T information twice in one program but correctly in the other. The funny thing is, neither program flagged it as unusual! My suggestion: print out the full forms from both and do a line-by-line comparison. It's tedious but worth it - you'll either find the error or have documentation to support whichever version you decide to file.