Articles published around the country repeat Intuit’s assertion — sometimes almost word for word — that the upcoming IRS pilot program would hurt Black Americans. A researcher whose work is cited by Intuit says the company is misstating her findings.
https://www.freetaxusa.com/
Switch, and never look back.
Get the link directly from the IRS: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free
I’ve had less than ideal experiences with the IRS linked companies. Freetaxusa.com has definitely been the best one by far for me. And my taxes are pretty complicated.
Freetaxusa is one of the options available in that link.
The others are so bad that it seems like they are there to distract people from freetaxusa. It’s like Intuit was able to convince the IRS to add a bunch of filler apps to give people a bad experience and drive them back to Turbotax. That’s why I don’t recommend that list. It seems intentionally misleading and distracting to me.
The IRS has been cozy with Intuit for decades, and should not really be trusted with advice on free or affordable tax prep solutions.
I never gave them a chance because their name screamed: scammy site designed to lure old people into file taxes there.
But last year someone on here or reddit kicked off a thread and tons of people were singing it’s praises.
So I checked it out after TurboTax was trying to charge me like $230 to do my taxes.
It was easier than TurboTax and I got the same numbers at the end, so I decided to go with them. I ended up spending $10 or something for the ability to refile amendments later or something. Honestly, I wanted to give them some money because I want them to stick around.
It was a great experience. I’ll be using them moving forward.
You’re right about their name. They really should have picked something less suspicious.
It essentially sounds like “FreeGiftCards.com”
Or OLT.com. The Web app takes you step by step, just like turbotax.
I second that, been using olt for years now and it’s super affordable and reliable. Not the cleanest interface though
still a c corp. Enshitification will take them too. The IRS free fillable forms is what everyone should be using. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms
Otherwise there is a profit motive for the status quo.
Do they store records year over year so you don’t have to type everything in again?
Yup, been using them for years.
To add to this, you can also export your last year tax documents (from TurboTax or any other tax service) and import them into freetaxusa so you don’t need to manually enter all of that info! Made it super easy to switch to them last year, just wish I had found out about them sooner tbh
I’ve been using this for several years now and got a few other people to use it.