It’s that time of year again – tax filing for 2015 is here. There is always a variety of deals that come up when doing taxes:
- Banks/prepaid cards offering a bonus for getting your tax refunded to that account
- Tax preparation services offering incentives for using their services
These bonuses range from free money, miles, gift cards, rebates and more. We’ll round up the offers currently available, and we’ll keep adding any additional offers or deals that come out, from other posts on our site or offers found around the web.
[The purpose is not to endorse any service – it’s for informational purposes only.]
Contents
Pay Taxes with a Credit Card
There are a few different providers through which you can pay your taxes with a credit card – all come with a fee. The lowest cost option is Pay1040.com and you’ll pay a fee of just 1.87% to enable the use of Visa/MC/Amex/Discover. This can be a great deal to help meet a minimum spend requirement or any other sort of spend threshold.
See our post A Complete Guide To Paying Your Federal Taxes With A Credit Card for more info on this.
(Paying taxes with a credit card isn’t technically a ‘deal’ but it is something that interests many and we thought to include it here.)
Free Filing for Income Below $62k
The IRS provides free filing software for those with incomes below $62,000. It give you the option of using many of the popular tax filing options (H&R, TurboTax, and many more) – all for free.
Anyone can also get forms for filing taxes at the link above.
Cashback Shopping Portal
Many popular tax preparation services offer cashback via the regular shopping portals. This will only work for online filings, of course. Check Cashbackmonitor for the various options. You can find many of them at this link.
Of particular interest, I noticed that H&R Block offers 20% back via Discover Deals. Double that for 40% back at year’s end (for those enrolled in the double promo) and it’s really a great deal. And you can still try stacking with the Amex Offer for H&R mentioned below (although there is some risk in doing that).
TurboTax
1,000 Free Southwest Miles
- Earn 1,000 free Southwest miles when filing taxes online with TurboTax and going through the Rapid Rewards shopping portal.
- Looks like even the free filing option is eligible for the 1,000-mile bonus, see Terms below.
Terms:
The 1,000 bonus Rapid Rewards® Points can only be earned by filing an online federal tax return. Filing must be made between Monday, January 4, 2016 and Monday, April 18, 2016 (or by Tuesday, April 19, 2016 if you file in ME or MA) after clicking through this offer on Rapid Rewards Shopping to be eligible (the “Bonus Period”)). TurboTax Online Federal Products qualifying for 1,000 bonus Rapid Rewards Points are the 2015 online version of TurboTax Federal Free Edition, TurboTax Deluxe, TurboTax Premier, and TurboTax Home & Business. This bonus Rapid Rewards Points offer may not be combined with any other product or offer, limit one (1) bonus redemption per Rapid Rewards account number. Eligible only after a tax year 2015 completed federal tax return is filed during the Bonus Period. Federal tax filings made using TurboTax CDs, downloaded products, or in-app purchases are not eligible for the bonus offer. Please allow six to eight weeks from the date of your qualified federal tax filing for your Rapid Rewards account to be credited with 1,000 bonus Rapid Rewards Points.
Note that some people mention having problems getting these miles posted in the past, and it needed manual input.
State Farm Customers
Via MyMoneyBlog, State Farm customers can get a discounted rate on their TurboTax fees. The standard price is $0/$35/$55/$80 for Free/Deluxe/Premier/Home&Business. With the State Farm link, the price should be $0/$0/$20/$30.
Insurance-only customers of State Farm are not eligible for this discount.
Netspend & Fidelity Customers
Direct Link for Fidelity
Fidelity customers can get a discounted rate on their TurboTax fees. The standard price is $0/$35/$55/$80 for Free/Deluxe/Premier/Home&Business. With the Fidelity link, the price is $0/$25/$40/$60.
Direct Link for Netspend
Netspend customers can get the same discount as Fidelity customers.
(These deals will probably not stack with the 1,000 free Southwest miles deal since each one needs a unique link.)
H&R Block.com
10% Gift Card Bonus
H&R Block offers the option of getting up to a 10% bonus when getting your tax refund in the form of a gift card instead of cash. Basic and Free customers get a 5% bonus, and Deluxe and Premier customers get a 10% bonus. Popular merchants available include Amazon, Home Depot, Kohl’s and many more.
See our post 10% Gift Card Bonus on Tax Refund with H&R Block for all the details.
$15 Off $40 with Amex
This one is showing in the Amex login.
- Spend $40 or more at hrblock.com with a registered Amex card and receive a $15 statement credit. Online only. Expires 4/15/16.
Discounted Rates
A couple deals found on Slickdeals for H&R tax packages:
- With state filing – get Deluxe at just $15 and Premium at $25, and it’s reported there that it will stack with the 10% gift card bonus as well. More details on Slickdeals.
- Without state filing – get Deluxe for $10.50 and Premium for $15 with this link. (Slickdeals)
Jackson Hewitt
$50 Rebate onto Prepaid Serve Card
- Get $50 on an American Express Serve card when doing taxes with Jackson Hewitt. Rebate is issued the same day. No minimum purchase is mentioned for this offer (as it is for the Walmart offer below). Offer valid at Jackson Hewitt storefront locations only.
It sounds like they can issue the $50 onto a new Serve card, and thus, you may be able to do this deal even if you don’t have a Serve prepaid account.
Free $50 Walmart Gift Card
- Get a free $50 Walmart e-gift card when you use Jackson Hewitt tax preparation services costing $150 or more. The gift card is issued the same day.
Unclear if this offer will work with online filings; more likely, it will only work for storefront filings.
Please add in the comments any additional tax-related deals and we’ll add them in.
Only to not be able to use the $50.00 gift card…monica
Would you have updates on this for 2017 tax filing?
Last year Jackson Hewitt offered a $25 gift card (or maybe $50? I really can’t remember) to file with them and it was available online. So sad to see they aren’t doing that this year! They were the best place for me to file.
So far, we’re only seeing in-store deals.
H&R Block offering to match 10% for every $100 of refund put on a gift card such as amazon
Thanks, just posted about this and added
The SavingStar.com shopping portal has cash back deals and promotional codes for E-File.com, FreeTaxUSA, H&R Block, TaxACT, and TurboTax. I’m sure there are other portals with similar deals, so you may want to look around. Here is a link to a few images with the details, so you don’t have to sign up with SavingStar.com just to see what I’m talking about:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~lemay/Taxes-2015/
With SavingStar.com you can cash out all your money into a bank account any time you have at least $5 in the account.
If you use the SavingStar.com credit card with the portal, you get an additional 5% cash back. However, since the NBA All-Star weekend is Feb 12-14, you could also use the BBVA Compass NBA American Express card during those 3 days on the SavingStar.com or other shopping portals to get 5% cash back, assuming you have that card.
Thanks, I didn’t realize there were shopping portal offers. Added.
Last year, both Redbird and T-Mobile offered a $20 bonus for having your tax refund direct deposited to the account. Is there anything like that this year?
We’ll add what we find 🙂
I like to download the software. It looks like the promo does not include downloads. Good price on the e-file though.
Came across TaxAct after TT dropped their Vanguard promo and wanted $90 for fed and state e file. This TaxAct promo link is $14.99 fed and state e file, very happy with my experience… goodbye TT
https://www.taxact.com/applications/file-now/?d=d4&tle=fc212jhphcclcjtp2fk1jlh2tq2qclhp22h1hutmuktcu1tIkpkx#/register?product_code=15CRPLUFEDFEDOL&promo=plus15
Note: Promo is 14.99 TOTAL. Regular pricing is 14.99 per each
Thanks for the timely tip! I was going to use TaxAct anyway and appreciate the extra savings. Note for others: the promo didn’t apply automatically, but I called their support line – (319) 373-3600 – and they fixed it quickly.
Tax Hawk lets you do your federal for free and state for 12.99 without any promos
If you’re going to buy TurboTax then Amazon definitely has the best deal right now (better than going through Fidelity). Especially for those like me who loaded their balance last quarter during the Discover / Chase Freedom 10% cashback.
It looks to me like the Fidelity rates are significantly better than the Amazon prices. For example, the Deluxe is $40 versus $25 with Fidelity.
But if your AGI is under $60,000, the best deal of all is IRS’ Free File. It links to popular programs (like H&R Block At Home) and as long as you meet the requirements, both federal and state filings are free.
http://www.irs.gov/freefile
Actually, it’s $62,000
Thanks, added