Remember this when you vote! Conservatives will dismantle this faster than you can say “Matt Gaetz is a sex trafficker”.
It’s amazing to see something like this having progress. I thought that with all the lobbying the tax companies do we would never see something like this in the US.
Me too. I was skeptical at first, but maybe people can start giving Biden the smallest shred of credit now please? Lack of enthusiasm always kills the left for no reason.
Unfortunately it is a lot easier to rile someone up with anger and fear than with gratitude and hope… Republicans feed on one, Democrats (sometimes) feed on the other.
Its still in its infancy so that may well still effectively be true
That’s, honestly, what I expected as well when I first heard about it, but I’m so glad it’s moving forward. I shouldn’t have to pay money to correctly and accurately pay the government money.
Oh, Conservatives will try to dismantle this. You know, “SoCiALisM!”
Attention: please go to IRS.gov regardless of if your state qualifies for this program. The IRS free file program is available to most taxpayers and is based on amount of income rather than types of income.
In the meantime… I highly recommend people try out FreeTaxUSA (aka TaxHawk). They charge $15 to e-file both Federal and State taxes, with no upcharge for self employed people.
For TurboTax Home & Business it would be $190.
FTU usually does federal for free, don’t they? My last filing was free federal and $15 state.
Yep. Federal is free with options to buy up for other benefits.
freefillableforms.com is a run by the IRS. It is a free federal e-file; you just have to do the math yourself.
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If your taxes are simple enough for the free version that’s great! Promising free is 100% a way that they get you in the door and upsell you though.
Yep, there actually is a free version that’s truly free for some people (Free File), but the company behind TurboTax actively hid it. They instead heavily marketed another version of TurboTax (Free Edition) as “free, free, free!”, only to tell people who were already halfway through filing that their taxes were “too complicated” and required large payments after all. Horrible tactics and they were fined for it.
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Only 13 states are participating in the roll out… still. That’s better than the 0 we’re currently experiencing.
One of the main criticisms of the program is that it the direct file pilot only covers individual federal tax returns and does not prepare state returns. However, IRS officials said they are working with Arizona, California, Massachusetts and New York for filing season 2024 to integrate state taxes into the pilot.
Taxpayers in nine other states that don’t have an income tax – Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming — may also be eligible to participate in the pilot, according to the IRS.
As an aside, the wording in the article makes me feel like the people putting this forward have a gun to their head and they’re trying really hard not to piss TurboTax off.
My state, Ohio, has a way to efile your state return, albeit a little unpolished. I’ve been using TaxAct (free for federal at my income) and just doing my state on Ohio’s website.
It is rather foolish to exclude states just because you can’t do state taxes, too.
Only 13 states are participating in the roll out… still
Crawl, walk, run. As the article stated, they are trying to avoid the cluster-fuck that was the healthcare.gov rollout. Assuming the Repuglicans don’t manage to kill this initiative, I suspect it’s going to be extremely popular. It would be pretty easy for the system to crumble under the weight of so many people filing at once. Best to get a sense of what they are going to need and roll out carefully.
Ooh, I live in one of them! Hope I can get enrolled.
The IRS should figure out your taxes for you and then you have to send them your deductions.
Tax my earnings, tax my purchases, then charge me to figure out how much one of us owes the other…
Yeah, the system is fucking broken
