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Cofiled vs TurboTax: which should you use?

TurboTax is software you drive yourself. Cofiled reads your papers and a licensed CPA files it. Here's the honest side by side, and when each one wins.

Updated September 2026 · 4 min read

The real difference is one word: who does the work. TurboTax is do-it-yourself software. It asks you a long line of questions and you type in every number off every form, then you sign and file it yourself. Cofiled is a filing service. You send your papers, software reads the numbers off them for you, and a licensed CPA reviews and files the return under their own credentials.

The work TurboTax quietly hands you

With any gig or self-employment income, the return is only as right as the bookkeeping behind it, and TurboTax leaves the bookkeeping to you. You sort a year of income and expenses into the right buckets on the expense screens, guessing at the edges, and every wrong bucket or missed write-off is yours to own. Cofiled sorts the year for you, free, and finds the deductions while it does, so the numbers on the return come from real books instead of a late-night guess.

Where TurboTax is genuinely fine

If your taxes are one W-2 and nothing else, and you don't mind an hour of typing, the free tier does the job and costs nothing. Plenty of people should just use it. We'd rather tell you that than sell you something you don't need.

Where Cofiled wins

The moment there's a 1099, a rideshare summary, a rental, or a year you fell behind, the DIY interview turns into work you can get wrong. That's where handing it over pays off. You never decode an IRS instruction or decide which form you need. Your papers decide, we read them, and a real person is on the hook for the result, not you.

• –You don't type numbers off forms. Drop the 1099 and it's read for you.
• –A licensed CPA reviews and signs, so you're not the last set of eyes.
• –One flat $99, federal and state, no per-form upsells at the end.
• –Behind a few years? We pull your IRS transcripts and file 2019 through 2026.

The bottom line

TurboTax sells you the tools to do your own taxes. Cofiled does them. If you want the wheel, use the software. If you want it off your plate with a professional's name on it, that's us, for less than a self-employed software tier usually costs. What is Cofiled walks through the whole thing, and the pricing guide has the full number.