The real cost of TurboTax for America's independent contractors

Every year, over a hundred million Americans self-prepare their tax returns using TurboTax, America’s most ubiquitous tax filing software. We’re told we’ll get our maximum refund for free (free, free, anyone?), and for those working full-time W-2 jobs, TurboTax works perfectly fine. 

However, for the 60-80M (and growing) segment of Americans earning 1099 income, the tax-filing experience is nothing like that… 

Lured in with the same “free free free” messaging, independent contractor taxes quickly spiral into a user experience and financial nightmare. About half way through the flow, you’re told that you’re filing business taxes and that’s where TurboTax’s Self-Employed product upsells begin. Turns out, you were supposed to have tracked receipts, kept mileage logs, and known exactly what a “business operations expense” was throughout your past 12 months of work. 

It can be hard to find transparent pricing from Intuit, but we did our research; if you earned 1099 income and want to file with TurboTax for tax year 2022, here’s what you’re looking at cost-wise:

What’s it actually cost a ‘typical’ independent contractor to file with TurboTax?

Let’s just assume that a ‘typical’ independent contractor has one income source (aka one 1099 tax form), and they earned income in just one state (note: this isn’t typical – independent contractors often have multiple income sources across multiple states)...

The moment you upload one 1099 tax form into TurboTax, you’re automatically upsold from a free $0 filing, all the way up to $178.99 for their Self-Employed DIY product. Note: the $178.99 must be paid in full to complete your filing – there’s no option to pay monthly over time. 

In any case, this $178.99 price is just the starting point for independent contractors who want to file with TurboTax, and the Self-Employed DIY product requires a lot of time, manual data entry, and tax law knowledge of the user. 

If you have multiple jobs or multi-state income – as so many Americans do nowadays – TurboTax is going to charge you for it. If you need advice and want to chat directly with an expert – even for just one simple question about your tax situation – you have to upgrade to TurboTax’s Self-Employed Live or Full Service product (an additional $90-to-$480). They’ll even charge you an additional $49.99 for audit defense!

Now, even with TurboTax’s predictable tax season product discounts – if you’re working a few jobs in more than one state – you’re going to pay well over $200 just to file. Even at that price, you still won’t have the additional support or protection features which are only available a la carte or in TurboTax’s more expensive products (Live or Full Service). 

Why should work marketplaces care?

The hardest-working demographic of the American workforce is being aggressively – and in some cases illegally – overcharged for software products that don’t match-up with the type of work they’re doing. 

Workers who’d prefer to spend their time doing literally anything else, are forced into hours of combing through a year’s worth of receipts, then have to enter them into an expensive and dated tax software just to get full credit at tax time. They’re doing this every single year.

As a gig work platform, however, you have the opportunity to play a role in reducing the anxiety that your workforce feels during tax season – and to build worker loyalty in the process. 

If a person is actively working on your platform, they’re probably looking to you for advice on how to better run their business. So, if you have a formal rewards program for your workforce, you should seek out partnerships with expense tracking and/or tax filing softwares that are better suited to your independent contractors. 

Believe us when we say this: You can find better products, and you can definitely get better deals for your workers than the same old $20-$40 discount [off Self-Employed DIY or Live] that TurboTax offers its corporate partners every year. 

Keeper: Designed for independent contract work

Keeper is an expense-tracking and tax-filing software purpose-built for the 1099 workforce, and contrary to TurboTax, pricing transparency and a feature-rich user experience are at the core of what we do. Oh, and no upsells. Ever.

Keeper’s automatic write-off detection feature automates the process of finding and filing tax deductions – and uncovers an average of $1,249 in additional write-offs versus traditional tax softwares. 

All Keeper users enjoy both audit protection and 1:1 chat access from a dedicated tax assistant at no additional cost. We also won’t charge additional fees for multi-state income, and we certainly won’t try to upsell users who have multiple sources of income. 

One price gets Keeper users everything they’ll need to successfully file their taxes, and our partners’ independent contractors get meaningful product discounts between 40% and 70% (off our $192 retail price).