CitizenTax: Epic Failure

Mar 4, 11:26 AM by Eric Allen

I really should have Done my homework before picking a free tax preparation service through the IRS’s Free File site. After my ordeal with CitizenTax (or CitizenTaxFree.com, the version I used from the same people), $75 to a tax preparer seemed like no big deal.

I should have run at the first sight of trouble: every now and then as I walked through the process their site would return an error page. A simple refresh fixed it, usually, but that is a little worrisome for a site that’s supposed to be processing my taxes. I went ahead anyway, and after submitting my taxes (I must admit, the site was pretty easy to use) logged out and went on to do other things.

I came back the next day to check on the status of my return, and lo and behold I can’t log in! I double-check, triple-check my username and password with no success. I then sought out their support page, and after 10 minutes of digging got myself registered (yes, yet another account) with their issue tracking system. I filed a ticket, and the following day I got a completely unhelpful reply saying to enter my username and password to log in. I carefully explained that I was unable to log in with said username and password. After a good deal more back-and-forth, I came to discover a fun feature of their password hashing algorithm: they don’t support symbols in passwords. I had naïvely used my secure password generator (1Password) to generate a good password, and it had put in symbols! CitizenTax informed me that my account was impossible to access, they couldn’t reset my password, and I should just sign up again and restart my return. But I had already filed it!! I just wanted to check the status to make sure the IRS had accepted it. After calling the IRS I discovered that I was supposed to receive an email confirmation from them, which I never got, saying the IRS had processed my return. The only way I know it went through is that they took the money out of my checking account four days later!

Just to add to the ordeal, CitizenTax doesn’t inform you about standard deductions, so I ended up paying $400 too much. This I discovered from the CPA (who will be filing my taxes next year) I got to clean up the mess CitizenTax left.

Good job, CitizenTax. Way to handle people’s tax records in a completely incompetent and unfriendly way. Next time I’ll be more careful!