It’s that time of year again – tax time. It creeps up on you like a bad case of the flu. Some people really enjoy tax time as they expect to receive money back from the government. Others dread it because they end up having to pay Uncle Sam additional precious pennies. Either result, the path is still the same. Tax paperwork. Over the past 5 years, filing taxes has become less painful because of online resources like H&R Block and Intuit’s Turbo Tax. Intuit also has a mobile filing option with Turbo Tax Snap Tax.
Turbo Tax Snap Tax for iPhone is designed to make e-filing completely painless. One of my most hated parts of e-filing is the entering of the information off of the W-2s. Well, Snap Tax allows entry of W-2 information via camera snap shot. You take a picture of your W-2, review the information and answer a few personal questions to verify your identity, then you’re ready to file.
The app is free to download, but in order to e-file, users must purchase the federal and state return in-app purchase. The in-app purchase for federal and state taxes is $24.99. This is not uncommon for e-filing. Many e-file options let you prepare the taxes completely and the last step is purchasing the filing step.
Snap Tax is very easy to use and I can recommend it as an easy way to prep your taxes, but the $24.99 fee to file is a bit steep. There are true free filing services. I recommend visiting irs.gov to find these services.
