Warning The Credit Karma Tax software has at least one Major flaw in it.


It is tax time, and around this time last year I recommended Credit Karma tax preparation software to my readers. I used in last year, found it easy to use and had no problems with it. It is free for all users.

Unfortunately this year I found a major flaw in the way their software is written. Their software does not recognize the right of unmarried people over 55 to make a $1,000 catch up contribution to their HSA accounts. This particular flaw will only affect those unmarried people over 55 that take advantage of the catch up contribution. While that is probably a pretty small percentage of the population those that do make the catch up contribution and do not catch the flaw could end paying more than $300 extra in state and federal taxes.

For those that do not have to worry about that flaw I would still have concerns of about using this software since if they missed this what else might they have missed? Perhaps more importantly is my opinion that they have virtually no customer service once I identified the problem.

I really like Credit Karma and was on board with their efforts to make tax filing free and easy for everyone, but if they are going to do it they have to do it right. I went to great lengths to try and explain their error to them over the last couple of weeks prior to issuing this warning. Their response to date would be comical if not so sad.

They have no live person you can call and talk to on the phone. However I went out of my way several times to explain the issue to them. I even went so far as to send them a link to the form and instructions from the IRS site showing them how the law reads, and then had my son, who is a coder, put a response in language a coder would understand to see how they skipped a step. I did everything I could to show them the problem and what was needed to be done to correct the problem.



To date a couple of the stranger responses I received were. “We believe we resolved your issue.” This response did not tell me how they resolved it, but I went back on line and clearly nothing had changed. I even re-entered the numbers to make sure it was not a reset issue.

But the best response was the one that said “We haven’t heard back from you regarding your issue (# 621025) here is the last comment” then they showed my report of the issue. Since this was the first I heard from them and first I knew I had a number I was perplexed, especially because within the body of the email it was clear the only communication on the subject was from me! And their response was they had not heard from me?

I responded to both those e-mails and never heard another word.

So whether you use Credit Karma or any other paid software make sure you check the actual forms before sending in you tax forms. Failure to do so could make you pay more taxes than you owe, or cheat the IRS unwittingly. Neither case is good for you as you are ultimately responsible for what your turn into the IRS.

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