You depend on the company that makes your tax preparation software to actually be good at math, but Kevin is a little confused when looking at the pricing scheme for TurboTax this year. It doesn’t make any sense, he points out, if you need to file state income taxes, or if you’re filing returns for multiple households.

I recently started filling out my federal tax return so I could get an early jump on my tax refund. In years past, I have used TurboTax and this year I decided to try TurboTax online because it appeared cheaper than the download version of Turbo Tax ($29.95 vs. $59.95, see the photo I attached).

I say appeared to be cheaper, because when I went to purchase the online version it was $29.95 (for TurboTax Deluxe Federal) plus another $36.95 to submit my state tax return for a total of $66.90. That’s almost $7 more than download version PLUS you can only submit one federal tax return, as opposed to five with the download version.

How does this make any sense? Paying $7 more to submit 4 fewer federal tax returns!

We checked with Tax Cat, and he said that it’s a superior deal if you live in a state that doesn’t require a complicated income tax return (or require one at all), and really only need to file one return. Otherwise, it’s a really crappy deal.

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