The 30-second verdict
TurboTax was built for the average filer. If you have a W-2 and one brokerage account, it does the job. The questions start the moment your situation looks anything like an active trader's — and we could not find public documentation of a prompt that tells you when you have crossed that line.
If you trade prop firms, futures, options spreads, crypto across multiple wallets, or you trade actively enough to qualify for Trader Tax Status, a general filing workflow will produce a return that is accurate on the numbers you enter while leaving the discretionary choices to you — which deductions to claim, whether to make an election, whether broker-by-broker wash sale reporting needs aggregating, whether an entity is worth it. Those choices repeat every year. The §475(f) mark-to-market election is the one with a hard deadline attached, and for a trader with a bad year it is typically worth far more than the difference in preparation fees.
A profitable Apex / TopStep / FTMO trader netting $80,000 and filing a generic Schedule C typically has the same short list of open items: whether trader tax status applies, which trading expenses survive §162, whether an S-Corp election nets out ahead once payroll administration is priced in, and whether any §1256 contracts were reported under the 60/40 split. We do not publish a dollar figure for what that is worth, because it depends on the actual expense base and entity facts. For a trader with losses, the one genuinely time-limited item is the §475(f) mark-to-market election: it has to be filed by the original due date of the prior year's return, and without it net capital losses are limited to $3,000 per year against ordinary income instead of being fully deductible.
Quick comparison at a glance
| Feature | TurboTax | TraderTax |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (federal) | Free tier for simple returns; paid DIY tiers priced per situation — see Intuit for the current figure | $597 |
| With a professional involved | Expert Assist / Expert Full Service — amount not published as a flat rate | $1,197 – $2,497 |
| Primary design focus | General filers; investments supported | Active traders |
| Trader Tax Status (TTS) analysis | Not publicly documented | Included |
| Mark-to-market (§475(f)) election | Not publicly documented | Guidance included in Strategize It; the election filing is a priced add-on |
| Section 1256 60/40 futures treatment | Form 6781 supported | Handled by your preparer |
| Wash sales across multiple brokers | Not publicly documented | Cross-broker aggregation |
| Prop firm 1099-NEC payouts | Schedule C supported; no prop-firm-specific workflow documented | Trader-specific guidance |
| LLC / S-Corp entity strategy | Not publicly documented | Strategy included in Strategize It; formation and the S-Corp election are priced add-ons |
| Turnaround | Same-day (DIY) | 7–14 business days |
| Preparer expertise | General tax professionals | Licensed CPAs and EAs who specialise in traders |
Where TurboTax wins (for people who aren't traders)
1. It is cheap for simple W-2 returns
If your tax situation is a W-2, a standard deduction, and a handful of buy-and-hold trades through one broker, TurboTax is the right tool. Intuit's free tier covers simple returns, and its Premium tier handles a Schedule C and Schedule D. TraderTax does not compete on this. We do not file returns for W-2-only filers — we built the company because that's not the customer we serve.
2. One-click broker imports — for a single broker, casual activity
TurboTax has direct API connections to the major retail brokers (Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Robinhood, Webull, Interactive Brokers). For a single-broker filer with under 100 trades a year, you log in once and your 1099-B imports automatically. That's a real convenience and TurboTax has spent two decades polishing it.
What that integration cannot do is the work an active trader actually needs. Each broker's 1099-B only reports the wash sales within that broker; if you trade across two or more brokers (which most active traders do), a DIY workflow that accepts each 1099-B as filed will miss the cross-broker wash sales never get caught. The "convenience" of one-click import becomes a tax-reporting error the moment you're trading at any scale. TraderTax accepts the same broker exports (PDF and CSV from every major broker) — but we aggregate them across brokers before calculating wash sales. That's the correct treatment for an active trader and it's the entire reason the import "convenience" works against you at TurboTax once you outgrow one broker.
3. Real-time support during tax season
TurboTax's chat and phone support are open seven days a week through April. If you're filing yourself on a Sunday night and stuck, that's useful. TraderTax operates project-based — your return is assigned to a specific CPA who handles it end-to-end, not a rotating help desk.
Where TurboTax falls short for active traders
This is the meat of the comparison. Six specific gaps, each of which routinely costs traders far more than the entire annual TurboTax fee.
1. No Trader Tax Status (TTS) analysis
Trader Tax Status is an IRS classification — not an election — that lets qualifying active traders deduct trading-related business expenses on Schedule C instead of being limited to the $3,000 net capital loss cap. To qualify, you have to meet the IRS's substantial-trading-activity standard (volume, frequency, intent, time spent, holding periods).
We could not find public TurboTax documentation of a trader-tax-status qualification interview. There is no wizard that asks "How many trades did you place this year?" and tells you whether you qualify. You are expected to know the test, know the relevant case law (Endicott, King, Holsinger), and structure your return accordingly. Most active traders who qualify for TTS file as investors instead — because their general tax software never asked.
2. No mark-to-market (Section 475(f)) election workflow
The mark-to-market election under IRC Section 475(f) converts your trading gains and losses to ordinary income — removing the $3,000 annual cap on net capital losses. For a trader who has a bad year, this can be worth tens of thousands of dollars in deductibility. It is filed as a separate statement attached to either an extension or the return, by April 15 of the year you want it to apply.
We could not find public documentation that TurboTax generates the election statement, flags the April 15 deadline, or analyses whether MTM suits your trading style (it is not always — it removes long-term capital gains treatment), and does not handle the year-end mark-to-market accounting that the election requires. The election is essentially irreversible without IRS approval. More on the MTM election here.
3. No cross-broker wash sale aggregation
Each broker tracks wash sales only within their own platform. If you sell a position at Schwab at a loss on Tuesday and rebuy the same security at Fidelity on Friday, that is a wash sale under IRS rules — but neither broker will catch it, and neither 1099-B will reflect it. TurboTax processes each 1099-B independently and trusts the broker's wash sale calculation.
For traders who route across multiple brokers (common for prop firm participants, options traders running spreads, or anyone using a primary broker plus a TradingView-paired execution platform), the cross-broker wash sale gap can mean the IRS is later able to disallow loss deductions you already claimed. Trader-specialist preparers typically run a tool such as TradeLog, or aggregate manually, to catch this.
4. Generic Schedule C treatment of prop firm payouts
Funded prop firm payouts (Apex, TopStep, FTMO, MyFundedFutures, Tradeify, Lucid, and others) arrive as 1099-NEC nonemployee compensation. TurboTax handles 1099-NEC on Schedule C. What we could not find documented is a workflow that recognises the payer as a prop firm. It does not know that evaluation fees, reset fees, monthly platform fees, and data subscriptions are common business deductions. It does not flag whether you should be electing S-Corp status to reduce your self-employment tax exposure.
The return gets filed. The strategy does not get reviewed. For a profitable prop firm trader earning $80K+, the difference between a generic Schedule C and a trader-specialist return shows up in which deductions are claimed and which entity structure is used — how much that is worth depends on the actual numbers, which is why we do not quote a range. More on 1099-NEC prop firm taxation here.
5. Entity strategy is not part of a DIY filing product
TurboTax files the return you have. It does not advise on the return you should have. For a trader netting $80K+ in self-employment income, electing S-Corp status (via Form 2553, filed by March 16, 2026 for the 2026 tax year) can reduce self-employment tax, because only the reasonable-salary portion stays subject to payroll tax. The saving is bounded by the 15.3% rate applied to the amount shifted out of salary — and payroll filings, a separate entity return, and state fees eat into it, so at $80K it is a question rather than a given. Setting up the LLC, electing S-Corp treatment, structuring the reasonable salary, and managing payroll is entity-level strategy that sits outside TurboTax's product scope.
TraderTax's Strategize It tier ($2,497) includes entity strategy review as part of the engagement. More on LLC vs S-Corp for traders here.
6. Full-service CPAs are generalists, not trader specialists
The CPAs assigned through TurboTax's full-service tier (Expert Full Service, formerly Live Full Service) are licensed tax professionals — but they file every kind of return. A given CPA might handle your prop firm return on Tuesday and a small-business retail shop's return on Wednesday. They are generalists by design rather than trader specialists. We could not find public documentation that TurboTax routes returns by instrument type, that its professionals run wash-sale aggregation software, or that it publishes a position on the MTM election by trading style. If Intuit documents any of that in a current version, treat this section as out of date.
TraderTax's CPAs work exclusively on trader returns. Every return we file is some flavor of prop firm, futures, options, crypto, or active stock trading. The specialization is the entire product.
Pricing side-by-side
Here is how the two product ladders line up for an active trader scenario — federal return, one state, with active trading activity. A note on the TurboTax column: Intuit renamed these tiers (Live Assisted is now Expert Assist, Live Full Service is now Expert Full Service), prices move during the season, and Intuit's own full-service pages quote “starting at” without publishing an amount. So we name the tier rather than invent a figure. Check Intuit's pricing page for the current number before you compare. TraderTax's own prices are flat-rate and published.
| Scenario | TurboTax | TraderTax |
|---|---|---|
| DIY, software only | Do It Yourself Premium — Intuit listed $139 federal plus a state fee as of October 2026; check the current price | Not offered — by design. DIY misses too much on a trader return. |
| Software + a professional reviewer | Expert Assist Premium (formerly Live Assisted) — price varies by situation; not published as a flat figure | Not offered. CPAs and EAs in our partner network prepare the whole return rather than reviewing yours. |
| A professional does the whole return | Expert Full Service (formerly Live Full Service) — Intuit quotes “starting at” with no published amount | File It: $597 |
| Whole return + strategy review | No separately named trader-strategy tier that we could find documented | Optimize It: $1,197 |
| Whole return + entity + MTM analysis | Expert Full Service Premium — amount not published; trader-specific entity and §475 analysis not publicly documented as in scope | Strategize It: $2,497 (trader specialist) |
Price alone is not the comparison, because the two ladders include different things. TraderTax's Optimize It at $1,197 includes a deduction maximization review built around active trading. TurboTax's full-service tier will file your return, but we could not find documentation that it routes traders to a preparer who specializes in them, so the professional assigned may be seeing a prop firm 1099-NEC for the first time.
This page compares one DIY product against us. If you are weighing several providers rather than one, how to choose among the tax services built for active traders covers the named trader-tax firms alongside the software, with each figure labelled by how well it is sourced.
A simple decision framework
Pick TurboTax if:
- W-2 is your main income; trading is occasional.
- You take fewer than 50 trades per year through one or two brokers.
- You buy and hold; no spreads, no futures, no Section 475 considerations.
- You want to file the return yourself and be done in an afternoon.
- Your total cost sensitivity is the primary factor.
Pick TraderTax if:
- Trading is your primary income source.
- You take payouts from a prop firm — Apex, TopStep, FTMO, MyFundedFutures, Tradeify, or similar.
- You trade futures contracts (ES, NQ, CL, GC, RTY, etc.) and want the Section 1256 60/40 treatment.
- You qualify for or want to evaluate Trader Tax Status.
- You are considering a mark-to-market election or have already made one.
- You route trades across multiple brokers and need cross-broker wash sale aggregation.
- You are weighing LLC formation or S-Corp election for the trading business.
- You want a CPA who has never not filed a trader return.
The honest summary
TurboTax was built for the 90% of US filers who have a W-2 and a brokerage account on the side. For that customer it is excellent — fast, cheap, and reliable. Active traders are not that customer. The same features that make it accessible to the general public — automated single-broker import, generic guidance, standardized workflows, generalist professionals on the assisted tiers — are the ones that leave the judgment to you once your situation involves §1256 contracts, multi-broker wash sales, 1099-NEC prop firm payouts, or a pending mark-to-market election. That is a product-scope difference, not a defect.
The math is rarely close. A trader-specialist CPA at TraderTax usually pays for itself within the first return — before counting the multi-year compound from getting the entity structure, MTM timing, and TTS qualification right. If you're filing with TurboTax today and trading is becoming a real part of your income, you are almost certainly paying TurboTax to undercount your deductions and pay the IRS more than you owe.