{"id":1580,"date":"2009-02-01T22:19:02","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T06:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/?p=1580"},"modified":"2015-04-17T16:08:35","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T23:08:35","slug":"e-file-your-california-tax-return-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/01\/e-file-your-california-tax-return-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"E-file your California tax return for free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you live in California, you probably qualify to use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftb.ca.gov\/online\/calFile\/\">CalFile<\/a>, the Franchise Tax Board&#8217;s free e-file service for filing your California tax return.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Who qualifies to use CalFile? You can if you:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are filing a 2008 California personal income tax return.<\/li>\n<li>Were a California resident all year in 2008.<\/li>\n<li>Meet our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftb.ca.gov\/online\/calfile\/qualifications.shtml\">CalFile qualifications<\/a> &#8211; 6.4 million California taxpayers do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve used <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FTurboTax-Center-Software%2Fb%3Fie%3DUTF8%26node%3D3003491%26ref_%3Damb_link_5747632_2&#038;tag=studioglyphic-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957\">TurboTax<\/a> to prepare my return for the last nine years because the questionnaire will often jog my memory about something I need to put into my tax return. They also now have the free <a href=\"http:\/\/turbotax.intuit.com\/personal-taxes\/itsdeductible\/index.jsp\">It&#8217;s Deductible<\/a> website where I can track and estimate the value of my charitable donations throughout the year and import into TurboTax at tax time. <\/p>\n<p>TurboTax only allows you to e-file your federal return for &#8220;free,&#8221; charging $20 to e-file the state return.* So I&#8217;ve always opted to print out and submit my state return by certified mail. <\/p>\n<p>Last year I came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftb.ca.gov\/online\/calFile\/index.asp\">CalFile<\/a> after I&#8217;d already prepared everything for mailing. This year I decided to give it a try, using the TurboTax numbers as a basis for comparison. CalFile took less than 30 minutes (faster than a trip to the post office) and was pretty easy. I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n<p><small>*TurboTax tried to jack up their prices and screw their customers earlier this year, as reflected in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Freview%2Fproduct%2FB001GLAVVU%3Fie%3DUTF8%26ref%255F%3Dcm%255Fcr%255Fpr%255Fhist%255F1%26showViewpoints%3D0%26filterBy%3DaddOneStar&#038;tag=studioglyphic-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957\">1-star reviews on Amazon<\/a>. In response to the outrage, Intuit dropped their prices to be competitive with TaxCut and stopped trying to charge $10 for every e-filed or printed federal return. In a related bit of shadiness, Amazon allowed the earlier Turbotax reviews to get wiped clean because they were now selling a &#8220;new version&#8221; of the software.<\/small><\/p>\n<p>Image CC BY <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/86530412@N02\/\" title=\"StockMonkeys.com\">StockMonkeys.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you live in California, you probably qualify to use CalFile, the Franchise Tax Board&#8217;s free e-file service for filing your California tax return. Who qualifies to use CalFile? You can if you: Are filing a 2008 California personal income tax return. Were a California resident all year in 2008. Meet our CalFile qualifications &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-useful-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/8194660049_6fa13d1263_k.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/psIKy-pu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3420,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions\/3420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioglyphic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}