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IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free
- olliej 4y agoRemember H&R Block, TurboTax, etc have all been caught tricking people into paying for free services, so watch out when using them if you are expecting free filing. Of course, this doesn't change the US Tax code being intentionally designed to be easy to make errors that can lead to significant fines.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fear_and_coffee 4y ago[dead]
- giantg2 4y agoYes, they lobby for convoluted tax code so they can sell software. The reason I would go with a company rather than the free IRS stuff is because they offer audit protection and representation.
- FatActor 4y agoI've been using TT for decades. Their "tricks" are basically asking you 2 or three times during the process if you want to pay for a new feature. Pretty lame for tricks. But annoying still. Also: just be rich. They don't investigate non-billionaires. Jeez.
- rgovostes 4y agoProPublica reported extensively on the deceptive tactics they actually use, such as marketing paid services as free, and making the actually free filing site hidden from search engines. Eventually they ended their participation in the IRS’s free filing program after all 50 states sued them for $141M for scamming the lowest income tax payers into paying unnecessarily. https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap
- beej71 4y agoWhen you qualify for free tax prep, does the IRS pay the companies for that? Or are the companies legally required to offer it for free?
- blendergeek 4y agoThese companies agreed to provide it for free to lower income people in a deal with the IRS. The IRS agreed not to make it easy to file taxes.
- bobro 4y agoI tried the fillable forms in previous years. They certainly aren’t easy and don’t make you confident you are filing an accurate form. Paying $50-100 to save a few hours and a lot of worrying is well worth it to me, even if along the way I bemoan the complexity and inaccessibility of the current tax system.
- coderintherye 4y agoI'm not going to claim they are easy, but they are accurate (they have a Do The Math calculation button). Even if you mess up, the IRS will typically send you a response noting where their calculations diverged from yours and offer to automatically adjust. (Which denotes the absurdity of this exercise for most taxpayers because the IRS already has all the information it needs to complete your taxes).
- jxramos 4y agoYah you have to be confident of the values you’re plugging in. Do the math is for the simple in-form formulae. Some of the raw data you put in comes from worksheets etc you fill out on your own. You may benefit from a gist I’ve kept around with some tax urls for free tools out there https://gist.github.com/jxramos/08ea6af443dae5a251f0a5b21ee5e80f https://gist.github.com/jxramos/08ea6af443dae5a251f0a5b21ee5...
- rtpg 4y agoAccuracy here is probably about classification? Like “am I really putting this in the right box?”
- geoelectric 4y agoWonder what the minimum information you could put in, and how accurate it'd have to be, to get that response. It'd be cool if you could lifehack your way into getting the IRS to do your taxes just by sending something obviously wrong that they'd autocorrect into the final product! Then we'd be roughly on parity with more sane countries that just send you a tax bill.
- 4y ago
- yawnxyz 4y agoWhat's the reasoning for setting the AGI at $73,000 or less? Does it go up as inflation goes up? Why not set it at $100,000 or $500,000?
- nightski 4y agoI'm guessing tax preparation companies don't make a lot of money off those filers anyways. But if you start taking away the more expensive customers, i.e. the business owners, investors, etc... then it becomes a problem. Lobbying basically.
- flatiron 4y agoWhen I worked in Brooklyn they would setup sidewalk booths. Walk up with your w2 and someone would take a picture with an iPad. They would confirm the details and leave. It’s amazing how many people showed up for that.
- coderintherye 4y agoNote, anyone regardless of AGI can use https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... It fails on some really specific use cases, but it works for the vast majority.
- baby 4y agoWhy do I even have to do anything? Just take it from my paycheck directly
- refurb 4y agoConsidering the IRS doesn't even have access to things like cost-basis for capital gains, no way I'd trust them to complete it correctly. They'll likely just assume best case scenario for them (and worst for you).
- Rury 4y agoThat hasn't been the case for me. I end up owing come tax time every year, and yet every time, after having paid what is owed, months later they give me a small refund anyways. Now I know where I can save money on my taxes, and I've done it before, but it's the savings are so small that it's not even worth the time doing. Yet, it's about what they give me in the refund. Why didn't they just keep it, especially given it's such a small amount?
- refurb 4y agoHow do you know the IRS is calculating it right?
- Rury 4y agoIt doesn't matter, as it's not evidence for them choosing the "best case scenario" for themselves. The best case would of been them just keeping an overpayment, and never refunding me anything. And besides, I have double checked the calculations before, and it's basically what they gave me (minus rounding cents to nearest dollar in each calculation).
- stoned 4y agoThey do, but then this is an annual reconciliation in case you had other income, or things changed, etc.
- 4y ago
- mindslight 4y agoThis reminds me it's time to start looking for the TurboTax torrent. The activation scheme is remarkably straightforward to crack yourself.
- judge2020 4y agoI'm surprised they still have the desktop version tbh. Do that many people prefer downloading and installing the software?
- mindslight 4y agoWell I for one surely wouldn't enter my personal information into a likely surveillance vacuum! I install the desktop software, make sure it works, then kill Internet access to the VM and never enable it again. For the wider market, I'd imagine there are a lot of people stuck in their patterns and discontinuing the product might make them look at other options.
- adventured 4y agoAccounting firms, large and small, are often reluctant to switch out of what they know, it's a huge hassle. It's still very common for firms to utilize installed tax preparation software.
- awepoiufjwaeoip 4y agoWhy would I enter sensitive financial information into a website that isn't owned and operated by the government (to whom I'm sending information anyway)? I don't want to use the internet for my taxes, so I do TurboTax locally and save that information in local files.
- dboreham 4y agoFor sensitive financial data, yes.
- neilv 4y agoThat company lobbies to make tax returns as miserable as they can, a bit like a protection racket. But stealing their product doesn't help -- it only relieves pressure to smack them down, or takes business away from their competitors.
- wespad 4y agohttps://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/ and their parent company https://www.taxhawk.com/ https://www.taxhawk.com/ They charge $14.99 for the state filing. Usually a coupon code available. Or go to the state's website (CA at least), and file that for free, too. But for the convenience of not having to input my info again, I'll pay their fee.
- KyleJune 4y agoAt what point is it recommended to not use a software like freetaxusa? I've been using it for years.
- moneywoes 4y agoBeing a US citizen abroad. I’m in this situation and have had to pay huge sums to accountants If anyone has any recommendations I’m all ears
- notyourwork 4y agoWhy are you paying an accountant?
- refurb 4y agoIt's pretty complex actually. There are multiple ways to avoid double taxation, but each have their own nuances and limitations (that can extend for years). Ideally you'd complete the return for each scenario and compare across them.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoIt turns out that paying an accountant is a good defense against audits if your tax situation has any complexity at all
- notyourwork 4y agoSorry I assumed my question implied that was what was being asked. What is the complexity because I’ve done my own taxes for two decades, every year things are nuanced and slightly different. Never have I used an accountant.
- neilv 4y agoLooks like IRS Free File Fillable Forms isn't yet available for 2022 Tax Year returns. Also looks like that's the only IRS e-File option for AGI over $73K that doesn't involve using a commercial software/service (which I assume will probably sell user's financial data, and then also let it get breached).
- autoexec 4y agoThat's my assumption too. There's no reason why the IRS can't create something that walks people through their own rules. Their list of "providers" is always filled with the most sketchiest sounding companies. ezTaxReturn.com FileYourTaxes.com 1040now.net and TaxSlayer.com sound like scam domains you'd see in a phishing email or a late night TV ad. People shouldn't have to surrender their data to third parties just to have a website walk them through their taxes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 0xcde4c3db 4y agoJust to be clear, Free File Fillable Forms is not run by the IRS, but by a private-sector vendor that is part of the Free File Alliance. I believe it's been run by Intuit and H&R Block at various points, but the current provider seems to be one I hadn't heard of (OnLine Taxes). I don't know the full chain of events and obligations, but my understanding is that there's an agreement in place that the IRS will not provide an in-house e-filing solution for individuals as long as the Free File Alliance continues to provide the Free File program (including Fillable Forms).
- neilv 4y agoSigh. Looks like I'm doing the paper forms yet again this year.
- oh_sigh 4y agoCall me crazy but I think it's a bad idea to do your taxes this early. I've gotten so many amended forms over the years that eat up so much time filing amended returns that I wait until the last minute now.
- odysseus 4y agoFlip side is identity thieves do your taxes early for you and get your refund.
- UncleEntity 4y agoNow that I think about it that’s probably what a phone call I recently received because I “signed up for increased life insurance” was all about. Dude insisted I was the one who initiated the contact and probably expected me to give personal information to correct the “mistake” or, at the very least, to figure out who is plotting my death. Guess I’m getting old enough that the scammers think I’m an easy mark.
- damontal 4y agoHappened to me. Then a few years later they used my kid’s ssn. So now we all have pins.
- PopAlongKid 4y agoIt is so easy to avoid this by simply opting in to the IP PIN (identity protection) from IRS, then no one else can successfully file a return under your name.
- helsinki 4y ago“for free”
- itslennysfault 4y agoI've been using https://TaxFreeUSA.com https://TaxFreeUSA.com for the past 5 years, and it's great. Just as intuitive as TurboTax, but totally free for federal (you pay for state, but I lived in WA until this year so it was totally free). Also, I sleep better at night knowing I'm not giving money to Intuit who is the largest lobbyist that keeps tax codes complex.
- nostromo 4y agoIntuit does not "keep tax codes complex" -- your legislators do that all on their own. Intuit does try to prevent the IRS from making it easier to file electronically for free -- that much is true.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago> Intuit does not "keep tax codes complex" -- your legislators do that all on their own. Lobbying, my friend. Intuit spends money to actively lobby to keep the tax code complex. Don't trust my word? Google it, or start with this [0]. [0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-block-spend-millions-lobbying-us-keep-doing-n736386 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-block-sp...
- jt2190 4y agoWhat did your Senator say when you wrote them a letter to complain?
- xeromal 4y agoThanks for you concern.
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoI don't have any Senator, I don't live in the US.
- nostromo 4y ago
- rdonohue 4y agoIf you prefer to do your federal taxes yourself (and/or want to crosscheck the free fillable forms) the following site provides an Excel approach: https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home I use it every year and find it to be great.
- ElijahLynn 4y agoThat seems odd they don't have it in a Google Sheet, which I initially thought it was because of speed reading the hostname, sites.google.com. I don't have Excel.
- toast0 4y agoYou can use those files with Open Office for the most part.
- nonfamous 4y agoRefreshingly, a Google search for “IRS Free File” returns this site as the top result and IRS sites for the top 4. This search used to be a haven for the scummiest ads too, and now it appears ad-free.
- ashconnor 4y agoAlso https://cash.app/taxes https://cash.app/taxes
- aceazzameen 4y agoThat used to be the original Credit Karma (the tax filing side). I liked them when they didn't require a mobile app to use their service. At least it helped me discover FreeTaxUSA.
- ashconnor 4y agoI filled out my forms on my laptop. I don't think you have to use the app beyond for logging in.
- aceazzameen 4y agoThat's the thing. I don't even want to use an app to log in. There's no reason it can't be a full browser experience.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoOriginal Credit Karma was nice, but they went overboard with geolocation: didn't allow to log in into my US account while in Canada, so had to stop using them.
- sea-gold 4y agoFormerly "Credit Karma Tax". "The Department of Justice announced today that it is requiring Intuit Inc. and Credit Karma Inc. (Credit Karma) to divest Credit Karma’s tax business, Credit Karma Tax, to Square Inc. in order for Intuit, the creator of TurboTax, to proceed with its $7.1 billion acquisition of Credit Karma." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-divestiture-credit-karma-tax-intuit-proceed-acquisition-credit https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-d...
- sircastor 4y agoI think this is the year that I’m going to finally hire an accountant. I have been doing my own taxes aided by software for nearly my entire adult life, and my taxes are complex. I’m tired of giving my information to some company that’s going to do their best to sell it again somehow. The funny thing is, I kind of like doing my taxes. Oh well
- evjim 4y agoUse the IRS free fillable forms. It autofills information from one sheet to the next and is pretty easy to figure out after reading the PDF instructions for each IRS form. Makes way more sense then filling bubbles on a tax website that always seem to use inconsistent wording to the actual IRS form
- gavinhoward 4y agoRelative of an employee of freetaxusa.com (TaxHawk). My relative is one of the people working on Free File. If you have any issues, don't hesitate to contact me [1]. Free File is something they are deadly serious about because they know Intuit, TurboTax, et al are scummy, and well, it brings in business. But Free File can be complicated (my relative complains about it a lot), so there may be issues. Please let me know. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/contact/ https://gavinhoward.com/contact/
- linsomniac 4y agoUsed it last year and liked it, planning to use it this year. Question: How does FreeTaxUSA make money to support this?
- gavinhoward 4y agoGood question. There are two answers: state filing (which sometimes costs) and add-ons such as their "Deluxe" offering. They make money by being much smaller than TurboTax and the others. Less people means less money spent. They do this by optimizing for the easy 80% use case and letting TurboTax et al take the hard 20%.
- linsomniac 4y agoGood to know, I think I ended up paying for both of those offerings last year to support it. I think TurboTax that I had used previously was a little smoother, but I hate their shenanigans with preventing IRS free options, etc. But, it went fairly smoothly.
- londgine 4y agoDoes freetaxusa support expats? I've been using a CPA since I couldn't find a website that was better. All of the websites offering to file, charge around $500.
- gavinhoward 4y ago
- u801e 4y agoI've been using Free fillable forms for quite a few years without any issues. Up until the 2020 tax year, they also had state fillable forms which I also used to file state taxes. Unfortunately, they stopped supporting individual filings for state taxes, so that's no longer an option. I actually filed my state taxes by paper for the first time in many years because of that.
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago[flagged]
- orthecreedence 4y agoI am Jack's complete lack of separation between state and industry.
- alok-g 4y agoDo any of the services (commercial or not) allow importing relevant prior years data from a different service? I would like freedom to easily switch, but don't know how to handle various carry-forwards from the prior returns.
- nirui 4y agoNot an American so I probably should not complain. But when I opened the page out of curiosity for the first time, I found many terms that require explanations, such as what is AGI? The "What Is IRS Free File?" section below it explained most of my questions, so I think the "What Is IRS Free File?" section should exchange it place with the "Choose from IRS Free File" section. This allows the reader to have a clearer mind when preforming the filing process. Just my two cents. I wouldn't take the matter lightly though, because based on my understanding and what I've learned from the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, IRS tax filing is a serious manner thus the tools designed to do that should be more user-friendly. I don't think getting kungfu-attacked by the IRS lady is enjoyable for any American (as well as going to jail/getting fined for misfiling).
- DoreenMichele 4y agoThe "What Is IRS Free File?" section below it explained most of my questions, so I think the "What Is IRS Free File?" section should exchange it place with the "Choose from IRS Free File" section. This allows the reader to have a clearer mind when preforming the filing process. Most Americans have been painfully aware that we have been unable to file online directly with the IRS and searching for a free file software is a giant nuisance. Given that the user base will be mostly Americans, I imagine it's probably fine.
- andreskytt 4y agoFormer head of IT at a tax authority of a small EU nation here. We get 95+ percent of online filing for private income tax (and have for 20 years), of course there is no fee, and you can have your refund on your account in a few hours. The whole process takes around 30 seconds. AMA.
- cbo100 4y agoSame in Australia, well except our refund usually takes around a week. And it gets better every year too. More and more data automatically pre-filled. More and more of the form intelligently hidden unless you need it. And yet every year I’m blown away by these stories from the US about all the hoops they need to jump through just to submit a simple tax return.
- nly 4y agoIt's crazy to me that all Americans have to do their taxes every year and are charged for this. Many people in the UK go their entire lives without ever interacting with HMRC (our equivalent of the IRS) Self Assessment (doing taxes every year) takes about 20-30 minutes and that's when I'm claiming tax reliefs
- rwmj 4y agoSelf Assessment is definitely not "20-30 minutes". Anyway what's crazy is that we have to do this at all. In normal countries the government calculates the tax you owe based on information filed by your employer, bank etc, and then sends you the bill. If you agree with it, you pay that. You are required to do no work at all unless you want to dispute the bill.
- itake 4y agoHow do you track income that wasn’t from your employer? Like rent? How do you track deductions like installing a heat pump?
- DangitBobby 4y ago> dispute the bill
- rwmj 4y agoYou'd have to ask how they do this in one of the European countries that has this kind of system. I suppose for rent you might need to register the rental (not a bad idea for landlords to be registered), and for the heat pump perhaps the installer would claim the discount. As I don't live in one of those countries, I don't know exactly how it works.
- Liquix 4y agoThe craziest part is that the IRS verifies this information against their records and will investigate you if things don't match up. If there's a source of truth each citizen's submission must align with, why not just use that to begin with and investigate people whose assets/deposits exceed their expected income?
- londgine 4y agoEvery year I ask, and every year I'm disappointed, but does any good solution exist for expats? I know I shouldn't be paying taxes, since I earn under the exception limit. But I don't know all the forms I should fill out, and all of the websites dedicated to expats are expensive, almost $500.
- 70rd 4y agoWhat exception? If you are a citizen and intend on returning to the US (or even intend to renounce) you should be in good standing with the IRS (FBARs and annual filings). You owe the difference between locally paid taxes and federal taxes, and can claim overpayment as tax credits. Most low-earners don't bother with this and use the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion Act [1]. Don't forget about FBARs if you have more than 10k across foreign banks accounts. [1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
- londgine 4y agoSorry, I meant exemption not exception. I was referring to the foreign earned income exclusion act. I never have to pay US taxes due to that, however I still have to file. Since I don't know the tax law, and I would hate to be on the bad side of the IRS, I hire a CPA every year. I am hoping that this year I may find a site that supports foreign citizens.
- amelius 4y agoWas GPT-3 trained on tax code too?
- prirun 4y agoThis is a good step. Now they need to trash that idea of having electronic payment companies send out a 1099K for anyone with $600/yr of online payments (PayPal, Venmo, etc.). I know they put the idea on hold because of backlash, but they need to dump it entirely. It will only generate $8B in tax revenue over the next 10 years ($800M/yr) but will cause a huge number of people to pay taxes they don't owe when they sell used crap on eBay, CraigsList, etc. The electronic payment companies don't know whether these payments are business-related or personal.
- coolspot 4y ago1099K is not income, just transaction volume. I had 1099K with $1M worth of transactions from CoinBase, which generated only like $10k of profit.
- prirun 4y agoBut I think a lot of ordinary people selling stuff on eBay will get this form and think "I have to report this to the government as income." And in fact, what I read about it is that if it isn't all income, you write a note about it when you file your taxes. How many people are going to know to do that? Unless you have actually run a business or are doing $1M transactions, you probably won't understand that selling some used junk doesn't require paying taxes on the "income".
- pibechorro 4y agoAaannnd its all wasted on arms deals.
- cebert 4y agoEvery year filling my taxes reminds me how lobbyists representing firms like Intuit (TurboTax) have gone out of their way to make tax filing a free service of the IRS. I don’t know why we allow this to continue in the US.
- Frost1x 4y ago>I don’t know why we allow this to continue in the US. It makes me wonder who "we" are in terms of controlling policy and direction in the country. It also makes me wonder what the motives are of the "we" if it's really inclusive of your typical voter and not a small subset of self-interested parties, many of which may not even be people.
- datavirtue 4y agoCool...finally moving into the 20th century. Oh, but no filling for people in an s-corp? No filing for people with a good job? No state returns? Maybe next century..oh, no, wait....nvm.
- amelius 4y agoDoes this contain AI? Perhaps this software can bring the double Irish Dutch sandwich within reach of normal citizens too.
- anonymousnotme 4y agoThis is probably not quite the right time of year for this post. I see: Fillable Forms is closed for the year November 17 was the last day to access accounts, make changes, print or resubmit a rejected return. After November 17, 2022, you will not have access to your Free File Fillable Forms account and your 2021 federal tax return. I would suspect that it will open in this next month or so. Does anybody use free file (https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...)? If so, what do they think of it? Why is it better than just sending postal mail (which one has always been able to file for free)? From a security point of view, is it better to send postal mail or have to worry about hackers and filing over the net? Also, note that there is open source software that might work for some people (depends on state and forms needed)? I found: https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ Is there other opensource software?
- rolenthedeep 4y agoI did this last year, and it was a pain in the ass. I did it out of spite because HR Block tried to force me to pay exorbitant amounts for their advanced filing which I definitely didn't need. If you do this, set aside an entire evening and expect to do only taxes. It isn't exactly hard, but the number of documents you need available can get large quickly. Instructions are confusing and there's a lot of cross-referencing. It's very tedious, but totally approachable for most people, I think.