Income below $66,000? You May Be Eligible for Free Tax Software

[james.hendrickson]

As part of an George W. Bush era push to increase electronic filing, the IRS is offering access to free tax preparation software for taxpayers who earn less than $66,000. The reason for the initiative is in 2002, the IRS cut a deal with the tax preparation industry to have the industry provide free access to efiling software in return for the IRS not creating their own efile platform.

The program opens in January and the agreement has been renewed through 2020.

The reason you don't hear about this is because the IRS has not heavily marketed it, neither has industry.

The link is below:

https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free

You'll need to answer some questions about your income, expected use of tax credits and location. Once you do that, it spits out a list of links to software you are eligible for.

Two side notes here:

1) The United Way also has a free tax filing program. Go => here.

2) Credit Karma also has a free tax preparation filing option, but it has a negative reputation and should be avoided.

Here is what the IRS page looks like:

[Gailete]

Would have been nice to know that prior to buying my tax software. I got TT which I use every years, so at tax time a lot of spots get automatically filled in. One year I tried to use a different software and I found myself owing something like $1K extra. I went and got TT and redid the taxes and they went down $1K. I have no clue what the problem had been, but I stick with TT. Last year as well as the one before, as part of the Amazon Vine program, they gave me TT to use and review. This year they only offered the basic program that I wouldn't have state, schedule C etc. on it, so I passed on that offer. A year or two ago, TT got weird and you had to pay more to get all the forms you needed. I guess paying for the software once out of three years was a savings though. Now to get to work on it!