2021 is coming to a close and it’s getting to that time of the year when you should be to look at your earnings for the year and what your tax return might look like. With a host of products available online, we wanted to spotlight the TurboTax “TaxCaster” free online tax calculator in this review to give you an idea of the tax estimates and data you can obtain. Intuit has been adding more and more “freemium” tools to its package online with TurboTax, and the latest calculator has us pretty impressed.
TurboTax TaxCaster Review
When you first browse to the TurboTax TaxCaster page on Intuit’s site, you are greeted with a nice landing page and an open canvas approach. It looks great on both a desktop and mobile phone. The application is free to use, and you start by entering some basic tax data such as marital status, income, and withholdings. The screen updates real-time, and guides you through a wizard of selection choices.
As mentioned, the first impression of the TaxCaster is impressive. The interface is very fast and easy to use. However, one of the more difficult aspects to using the calculator is that you need some basic background on your tax situation farily early in the process. We recommend grabbing a copy of your most recent pay stub and any other tracking documents you have available for the tax calculator, as you will be able to reference information you will need.
For individuals that have more complex tax situations, there are some options within the TaxCaster. For example, if you own a home there is a module for the mortgage tax deduction, and for filers with children, there is an option for the child tax credit.
As you get into using the tool, the beauty of the TurboTax online tax calculator is that it continues to compile your information real-time on the screen. After about 5 minutes of quick entry, we gleaned a fairly accurate picture of what our tax filing situation was going to look like.
