The prep fee is deducted from your refund. It is possible that there are cases where, if you have a complicated return, the prep fee would be the same or greater than the instant cash fee. Since most people have a simple return, in our experience it is more costly to get instant cash back than to simply pay to have it prepared. However, always crunch the numbers to see what’s best in our situation.

Doesn’t this include the fee that the tax preparer charges the client? If so, aren’t there circumstances under which it would be advantageous to take the instant refund? Depending on the refund amount, the fee you pay may be less than the tax preparer’s standard fee. This happened to me. I was charged $259 as a standard fee and was not given the option to do an instant refund. Had I done the instant refund, I would have paid much less.