1. Making free file more accessible
Now you can e-file your federal tax returns for FREE. However, if you aren’t able to do it, it may be because the paid tax-preparing industry, led by TurboTax maker Intuit, has done its best to hide the IRS’ Free File service on their sites from search engines, as ProPublica reported last year.
In response, the Internal Revenue Service scrapped a very old agreement not to make its own online filing system and barred companies from “any practice” that would eliminate Free File and its partnered programs.
For taxpayers with adjusted gross income of $69,000 or less (most Americans are in this situation), this means comfort and clarity in arranging your taxes through Free File, including for non-federal returns in more than twenty U.S. states (Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia).
