@ jess26 wrote:
FYI, Turbotax Free Guarantee is a different product from IRS Free File through Turbotax. E.g. if you need to report gambling winnings, for example, you still need to pay for Turbotax Deluxe. It's free with IRS Free File if your income is low. This is something that Turbotax should've made more clear and transparent to consumers.
You are correct that in such situations, TurboTax does not make it clear how to get to the TurboTax IRS Free File Program to continue filing for free, which is at a separate website apart from Online TurboTax. As a result, some people end up using and paying for Deluxe who have very little income. Unless they know to go to the IRS website and click a link to get to the TurboTax IRS Free File Program webpage to start their return, they could end up in regular Free Edition at the regular Online TurboTax website, and thus often have to upgrade to Deluxe. It is possible before paying for a user to switch from regular TurboTax to TurboTax IRS Free File Program, but many don't know how, unless they ask in this forum or find the relevant FAQ about how to switch.
This is mainly a user community forum. If you qualified for theTurboTax IRS Free File Program in the past and ended up using the wrong TurboTax product, you'd need to discuss your past experiences with Customer Support by phone. Tell them your complaints and exactly what you said above--that you qualified for the IRS Free File program each year and ended up in the wrong product. I don't know what they will tell you. It would have probably been better to have asked more timely when you found you were in a paid product last year, but it can't hurt to try.
The problem you have now, however, is that if you used a free product for 2019, you don't have phone support included. So if you can't reach Support by phone, I've also included how you can message a TurboTax Support agent at Twitter or Facebook.
