You've been able to file online for decades. You could either fill out the digital forms manually, doing all the calculations yourself (this is what I do, perso

You've been able to file online for decades. You could either fill out the digital forms manually, doing all the calculations yourself (this is what I do, personally); or, you could pay a private tax prep company to use their user-friendly tax prep software that will ask relevant questions and do the math for you. What's new here is the IRS providing the user-friendly tax prep software, at no cost to the user. It's still "in beta" (so to speak) though, so it doesn't yet support many tax situations.