I had used Turbotax (or whatever its original CD-ROM name was) since 1999. partly because I was mostly W2 with some investments, and party because of a massive Capital Loss I took in 2000 with the death of the .com's, and it kept track of all my gains/losses/ Capital Loss carryover until last year when I finally got back to zero on the carryover.
And before a smartass steps in, I know I could have done that myself, and several times in the last 20 years, i tried using something other than TT, and the cost was always within a few $. So not worth skipping. Plus their "price it" software for donations helped keep track of my goodwill donations through the years.
In addition, for the last 8ish years, USAA members got a decent discount as long as it was submitted before Mid March. and I kept using TT during all that time.
This year, with the loss of the carryover, combined with me not having enough deductibles to exceed the Standard Deduction (which I knew was going to happen), I finally looked around.
I went to sign up to use TT in Feb as a standard deduct W2 with dividend investment income, and even with the USAA discount the TT fucks wanted $79 to submit the mid-level version of the software because of the dividends. declined to use them this year.
looked around and used HR Block because they allowed for the standard deduction and dividends for right around $50. took 15 mins to resubmit everything for HRB and got the refund like 4 days later.
With all the buffonery going on with the IRS, I didnt want to submit via the IRS website "for free". I dont like HRB, but this was a zero-complication submission, and it basically was more than 35% cheaper to deal with HRB.