I haven't used TurboTax recently, but I just received a check from my state's government saying that they've settled with Intuit over charging customers tax return services that should have been free.
This angers me greatly at how scummy TurboTax and Intuit have become over the years. For alternatives, I've been using FreeTaxUSA but I'm sure there are others that people can recommend.
Imo, no, and that’s with selling stocks and such. As long as you know what box goes where it’s really not too bad, just time-consuming at times. I use FreeTaxUSA for state and federal, and I think it’s worth it. I feel like the whole “taxes are incredibly difficult” apply if there are a lot of edge cases surrounding deductions and the like, but to your point if you’re doing standard deductions you can definitely do them on your own.
Do you do a backdoor Roth IRA? Between that and stock sales, last time I tried freetaxusa it wasn’t possible.