Cash App Taxes 2024 (Tax Year 2023) Review (2024)

Cash App Taxes, formerly Credit Karma Tax, is the only online tax preparation service that's totally free for both federal and state tax filing. It supports most major IRS forms and schedules and is exceptionally easy to use, but its help content is nowhere near as robust as what you get from the best tax apps. There’s another tax prep website that’s free for federal and only $14.99 for state: FreeTaxUSA, one of this year’s Editors’ Choice winners. Intuit TurboTax and are also Editors’ Choice winners—TurboTax gives the best overall experience filing your taxes, while H&R Block has the best context-sensitive help.

Is Cash App Taxes Really Free?

Yes, it's really free to prepare and file your federal and state taxes using Cash App Taxes, though the app lacks some forms, like 2210 (underpayment of estimated taxes), and doesn’t support some situations, including multistate returns for taxpayers who are married and filing jointly.

Most tax prep sites have a free version, but the tax situations they support are very limited. The most expensive competitor, Intuit TurboTax Premium, is $89 at the time of writing, but that's an early discount price that will go up to $129 later in the filing season, with an additional $59 for state filing. Generally speaking, the more you pay to file your taxes, the more robust the help system and the better the user experience.

Is Cash App Taxes Safe to Use?

Cash App Taxes is an authorized e-file provider that adheres to the IRS's security, privacy, and business standards. The company's safety measures include 128-bit or higher encryption, a dedicated onsite security team, independent third parties that monitor the site for vulnerabilities, and support for multi-factor authentication.

How Does Cash App Taxes Work?

Like all tax preparation services, Cash App Taxes provides an online alternative to doing your taxes on paper. It takes control of the whole process like a human tax preparer in an office might. The app asks you questions, and you answer them by choosing among options and entering data. Cash App Taxes works in the background to do all the necessary calculations, then it enters your answers on the correct lines of the appropriate IRS forms and schedules.

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When you finish the federal section, relevant data is transferred to any state returns you must file so you can complete them. Before filing your return, Cash App Taxes reviews it for errors and possible missed deductions.

How Do You Get Started With Cash App Taxes?

Before creating an account in Cash App Taxes, you have to sign up for the related Cash App. Cash App is a free peer-to-peer mobile payment app that lets you send, receive, spend, store, and invest money.You also need to install the Cash App mobile app to get started, although you can switch to using the web app on a desktop or laptop computer once you're set up.

The signup and login process for Cash App Taxes have been simplified since last year, but it still requires three steps. Once you have an account, you enter your mobile phone number or email address, enter the code the company sends you, and supply a PIN and password. The login process is slightly more complicated than what you see in other tax apps, and Cash App Taxes doesn’t “converse” with you as much or offer a lot of guidance (more on that later). It first asks for your family’s personal information, like birth dates, Social Security numbers, and other information. Once you complete that section, you move on to questions about income and expenses, then deductions and credits, as you try to maximize your refund.

What Kind of Help Does Cash App Taxes Offer?

As you might expect from a free product, help in Cash App Taxes is very limited, nothing like what big names H&R Block or TurboTax offer, for example. Some lines on the interview pages link to explanations of the current tax topic. Other links open context-sensitive FAQs. You also get a Tax Help Center, a searchable collection of support articles, some of which pertain to the current topic and some of which veer from it (it's the same in other tax apps). Occasionally, Cash App Taxes directs you to IRS materials, which people are usually trying to avoid by using an online tax prep service. Chat and email help are available for procedural questions, but the company doesn’t offer professional tax guidance like many competitors do.

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Overall, the volume and depth of the help offered can’t compete with what you get from almost any other online tax prep service. Cash App Taxes would not be a good choice for someone with a lot of investment sales, for example, because it's a tricky topic that most people need help with, and the product doesn’t support importing such tax data. Since Cash App Taxes is free, gig workers and very small businesses with limited budgets might be served well by it, however.

How Does Cash App Taxes Deal With Self-Employment?

Cash App Taxes supports the tax topics needed to report self-employment income but lacks the extra help that sites like TurboTax and TaxSlayer offer. After answering a series of basic questions about your business or gig work, Cash App Taxes wants to know about your self-employment income. It’s careful with form 1099-K (payments processed through services like PayPal and your credit cards), asking you to enter the information on the form you received and verifying the source of the income (like business or rental income) so it knows where it should be reported.

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The app also supports the 1099-NEC, 1099-MISC, and other forms you may have received, and it includes a field for your gross receipts and sales not reported on tax forms, which you must tally on your own. Separate topic areas walk you through additional self-employment topics, like business use of home and vehicle expenses. You report general business expenses, like advertising and office supplies, on another set of pages. Here again, more guidance wouldn’t come amiss.

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Does Cash App Taxes Check Your Tax Return?

Cash App Taxes checks your tax return after you finish entering your data. It suggests tax topics you might have missed to increase your chances of a refund and tells you where you’ve made errors. You can click a link to correct the problems, but it doesn’t necessarily isolate the offending pages like TaxAct does. I hadn’t entered expenses for one of my businesses, and Cash App Tax regrettably took me to the beginning of that section instead of to the expense pages, where I needed to input the correct numbers.

If you’re not getting a refund from the IRS and will instead have to pay, there are a few options. You can have the money withdrawn from your checking account or Cash App balance or pay by check. You can also submit your payment on the IRS’s Direct Pay site. For state taxes due, contact your state department of revenue.

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Can You Do Your Taxes on Your Phone With Cash App Taxes?

Cash App Taxes works well on Android and iOS devices. The mobile app experience is very similar to the desktop browser version. The only real difference is the smaller display, which affects the positioning of some content and requires more scrolling, as you might expect. Like the desktop version, the mobile app is fast and free. It also looks great and uses the same data entry conventions as the desktop version.

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Help works the same way on a mobile device as on the desktop website, though FAQs and article content take up the whole page instead of overlapping it or appearing in the right pane. Cash App Taxes is a pleasure to use on mobile, working so well that it would be easy to complete a return there—as long as you don't need a lot of help.

A Good Solution for Some

Cash App Taxes might be a good option if you just have some side gig income and expenses to report in addition to other basic tax-related income and expenses. But if you anticipate needing much help, there are better online solutions, including FreeTaxUSA, one of our Editors’ Choice winners. If your budget allows it, TurboTax Premium (for the best overall experience) and (for the best context-sensitive help) are our top picks. They're both even better than FreeTaxUSA, albeit expensive, offering thorough coverage of tax topics and clear, understandable help everywhere you turn.

While you’re working on your 2023 income taxes, you can also read up on seven ways to minimize your taxes and what to do if you can't pay your taxes.