Free Tax Return scam by NYS (New York, York: credit card, how much, home)

[kevink1955]

My Daughter received a post card in the mail from the NYS Dept of taxation and finance that says if she made less than $57,000 she may be eligible to file your taxes for free through Free File.

We went to the site listed on the card www.tax.ny.gov and clicked the free file link. It brought us to a page listing several companys that will do free returns, 1 of them was H&R Block so we went there rather than 1 of the other ones I had never heard of before after all we woud be giving them her DOB and SSN.

So the H&R Block site loads and we enter all her info and the Federal return is complete, we then went to the State return and on the list of items you would need (besides your W2 and 1099 forms) was a debit or credit card.

We continued on and at the end they want $29.99 to file or print the state return, at that point we canceled the return.

The thing that realy burns me is what the hell is the state doing sending out post cards (at taxpayers expense) that direct you to a commercial site that wants you to pay for what the state said in the post card is free?

How about an audit to find out how much the state spent on this mailing to connect you with a business

Edit: I also sent a copy of this post to the State Comptroler, they are auditing all the special districts on LI they may want to look at themselves.

[BuffaloTransplant]

Our local school district had Finance Institute students do these (checked they the CPA who teaches the class). My sister-in-law also has to do them for free at the credit union she works for for the members. Many colleges with Finance and Accounting programs do this. You need to look for groups that do. Once you have the Federal, the state is easy -- unless there are lots of deduction items or odd things going on. Then it isn't a simple form and most places charge

[alw1964]

It's not a scam. Try going in through the federal site. The New York Return should have been free. I did a friend's return this way and used the H&R block site. Not sure why it didn't work for you.
Unless you have to file a federal return to get the free file for New York. did you try that?

I'm not sure why it charged you but it shouldn't have. The only other thing I can think of is she a dependent. But I don't see anything anywhere that says you can't be a dependent and still qualify for free file.

[kevink1955]

I do not know what happend but we completed the federal then the site gave us a list of items needed to complete the state return. Listed in the items was a debt or credit card. We continued on and at the end they wanted $29 to finish. It is a simple non dependent return that we have always done by using the NYS fillable PDF form so thats what we did again this year.

We followed the link on the post card she got from NYS and thats how it wound up.

Never received a response from the state comptrolers office from the complaint form I filled out either.

[CometV6787]

This entire NY efile "mandate" is a huge scam and I think the tax preparation service companies are in it together with the state of NY. I find it suspect that on tax.ny.gov they make you click through several different pages just to get to the pdf forms. But they made sure they put the "e-file requirement" right on the home page where they purport how "simple" it is. Well, it's also simple for me to do my own taxes with pen and paper and go to the post office to mail them, instead of paying someone $30-40 to add and subtract for me. Might as well do it while it's still free.