I would love to use one of the free products. Unfortunately, for me, TurboTax is the only one I've tried that will import all of my brokerages... Seems small price to pay.
And they always get me with the "Audit defense"... I am not sure how useful it will be if I ever get audited (I err on the side of caution when doing taxes), but still some small extra amount of money for extra peace of mind...
Since I'm not a tax professional at this time, I can tell you that your odds of being audited are somewhat random and usually very low unless your filing is off by a certain percentage in some fields/parameters. Lower income folks are more likely to be audited. The audit "defense" just means you'll get x hours of professional time if you were audited to represent you during an audit. On the whole, the odds of being audited are usually so small it's usually just free money for Intuit.
> TurboTax is the only one I've tried that will import all of my brokerages
That's trivial; don't throw your ranch so easily. You only have to copy few fields from your 1099 form and the instructions are very clear - which fields to copy and paste where.
And they always get me with the "Audit defense"... I am not sure how useful it will be if I ever get audited (I err on the side of caution when doing taxes), but still some small extra amount of money for extra peace of mind...