The free lunch is alive and well for anyone seeking tax help. The Internal Revenue Service, AARP, and several Web sites, forums, and newsgroups offer free assistance to the befuddled. But our recent test of some of those resources reveals that they are, at best, starting points. In many cases, you'll still have to pay a tax pro to get more complete answers.

For our test, we enlisted Jack Rosenberg, a tax partner at Goldstein Schechter Koch, a Florida accounting and consulting firm, who helped us prepare a batch of tax questions to ask the free services. We put all the questions to the IRS's Telephone Assistance service and TurboTax's new forum, at www.turbotaxsupport.com. We posted a few questions on AARP's Tax-Aide Web page and two tax newsgroups. Rosenberg then evaluated the answers we received.


IRS phone help: Nice, but limited

Internal audits of the IRS Telephone Assistance service found it to be accurate 91 percent of the time in fiscal 2007. When we called, getting a live representative often took less than a minute; getting an answer to one of our detailed questions took between 7 and 49 minutes. Once we got cut off after 26 minutes and had to start from scratch with someone new. Still, we found the reps friendly and polite.

The service always provided an answer, though sometimes it was to seek advice from a tax pro. Our expert found some answers to be incomplete or wrong. For example, a rep advised using Form 8283 to break down deductible unreimbursed expenses for travel to a church convention; Rosenberg said the form is for reporting noncash charitable contributions. The IRS correctly described how to treat income from inherited securities, but it didn't offer specific advice on savings bond sales that could have reduced taxes. Still, the reps gave useful pointers, like increasing withholding or making estimated tax payments to offset taxable income from the bonds.


TurboTax forum: Little help

In TurboTax's Live Community forum, any participant—expert or novice—can answer your question. You might hear from an enrolled agent or CPA working for Intuit and identified by a red "TurboTax Pro" icon. Or you might hear from a green "SuperUser," a knowledgeable member of the public invited to participate by Intuit.

We asked six questions and got responses within an hour for two, and within the day for one more. The answers we got were correct but incomplete. A divorced woman got an answer to her question about whether her deadbeat ex-husband could claim their children as dependents, but no guidance on her options after he stopped paying child support. An heir got no information on how to save taxes on accrued savings bond interest.

And more than a week after posting, we still hadn't received answers for half of our questions. We weren't alone. In late January, we noted 705 unanswered questions in the "deductions" section alone. Some had been posted for three weeks. An Intuit spokesman says the company makes no promises to answer all questions.


Other sites: Hit or miss

Other tax-help Web sites were similarly unresponsive. Two questions we sent to the Usenet newsgroup misc.tax.moderated were never accepted for posting. We did get a correct but incomplete answer from misc.tax, an unmoderated forum, to a question about deductible education expenses. A query that we posted on AARP's Tax-Aide page remained unanswered after more than two weeks. (AARP says most questions are answered within 3 to 5 business days.) But the Tax-Aide site does list answers to frequently asked questions.


The bottom line

These services might be good for basic questions, but they won't deliver detailed analysis and advice. For all but the simplest queries, we recommend paying a pro for complete, dependable answers.

WHERE WE WENT FOR FREE HELP Here are the free tax-help Web sites and other sources we tested in mid-to-late January 2008. We surveyed 6,000 readers and went undercover to find ways to get the most for your money. Among our findings: • IRS Telephone Assistance. To speak with a representative, dial 800-829-1040, press 1 (for English), then 5. During tax season, the service is available from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in your local time zone (Pacific time in Alaska and Hawaii). Write down the rep's ID number, the date and time you called, and the answers. If an audit reveals that the rep's guidance was wrong, you'll still owe any extra taxes, but you'll avoid penalties. Prepared tax topics covering popular categories are available at www.irs.gov. • TurboTax Live Community. Go to www.turbotaxsupport.com, then click on TurboTax Live Community in the box on the right side. You'll need to register and pick a user name before posting in one of more than a dozen tax categories. You can scroll through answered questions or search to see what's already been said about your topic. You can also answer other people's questions. • AARP's Tax-Aide. Go to www.aarp.org/money/taxaide and click on "Ask your federal tax questions here." Check the site's FAQs first to see if your questions have already been answered. • Usenet newsgroups. We found misc.taxes.moderated and misc.taxes by going to www.googlegroups.com and typing "taxes" in the Explore Groups search box. You'll have to register to post.