Used FreeTaxUSA for filing this year and really impressed with the results!

Do they handle rental properties well? I have two rentals plus everything OP mentioned and I've been using TurboTax but the price keeps going up every year.

Yes, FreeTaxUSA handles rental properties quite well. They have dedicated sections for each property where you can enter all income, expenses, depreciation and other rental-specific items. The interface walks you through everything you need to report for Schedule E. The software even helps track depreciation from prior years if you enter the information correctly. Just make sure you have good records of your rental income and expenses categorized properly, as you would need with any tax software.

How exactly does taxr.ai work? Does it actually fill out the forms for you or just tell you what to do?

I'm skeptical about using AI for tax stuff. How accurate is it really? I'm always worried about getting audited if I use some new tool.

It doesn't fill the forms out for you - it basically scans your tax documents and creates a detailed breakdown of what goes where. You still enter everything into FreeTaxUSA yourself, but you don't have to figure out which numbers go in which boxes or which forms you need. The accuracy has been spot-on in my experience. It's not actually calculating anything - it's just identifying the information on your forms and telling you where that information needs to be reported. They explain that they use the same technology the IRS uses to scan and process tax documents, so the document recognition is very reliable.

Wait, how does this even work? The IRS phone lines are literally always busy. Is this some kind of special access thing?

Sounds like a scam to me. There's no way to skip the IRS queue - everybody has to wait. They're probably just charging people for something you can do yourself for free.

It uses an automated system that continuously redials the IRS for you until it gets through, then it calls you and connects you directly to the agent. You don't have to sit there manually redialing for hours or days. No, it's definitely not special access or cutting the line. Everyone still waits in the same queue, but Claimyr handles the frustrating part of constantly redialing when you get the "due to high call volume" message. Once you're in the queue, you wait just like everyone else, but at least you're actually in line instead of getting a busy signal.

Yes, they do charge for state filing - I think it was around $15 for my state return. Still way cheaper than what I was paying before though! The federal filing is completely free regardless of how complicated your return is, which is what made the biggest difference for me. With my stocks and crypto transactions, other services were trying to charge me over $100 just for the federal part.

Not OP but I used FreeTaxUSA for crypto last year. It doesn't connect directly to exchanges like some premium services, but you can either enter transactions manually or import a CSV file if your exchange allows exports in that format. If you have tons of transactions, you might want to use a crypto tax service like CoinTracker or Koinly first to generate the required tax forms, then enter the summary into FreeTaxUSA.

Do they save your info from year to year? That's the only thing keeping me with TurboTax right now - I don't want to re-enter everything from scratch next year.

Yes, they definitely save your information year to year! You can import your previous year's return which pulls in all your personal info, employment info, etc. They even keep track of things like depreciation schedules and capital loss carryovers. The transition is pretty seamless if you're switching from another service too - just have a PDF of last year's return handy and you can pull most of the important info from there.