Since we're on the topic, this year I quit using turbo tax, and tried freetaxusa. It's just as easy, they found me a bigger refund, and it's a LOT less expensive to file.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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+1 to Freetax USA! It handles all the stuff which require premium editions of other tax applications. And this year they've added PDF parsing which greatly simplified my 1099s.
I never quite understood wtf is up with how the US tax system somehow includes a filing cost. I'd love to learn more, but I suspect it'd get me way too excited for this community, and not even in a good way.
All the relevant numbers should already be registered somewhere. Pulling them into a prefilled form should be trivial.
You would think that'd be the case... The tax system doesn't include the filing cost, private companies charge the fees and lobby the IRS to intentionally not make the process simple and free for Americans.
Further reading: https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap
That triggered me enough to attempt proper use of emojis: 🤯
I would show a screenshot of how I do my taxes, but then I'd doxx myself, my family, and my employer.
EDIT: The tax authorities have a video showing an example in English, for some reason: https://youtu.be/lzhL0otHsJs
But as an American we're free to decide which tax company is going to take our money, and also free to not have an accounting degree and mess up some math and then get audited. You can't put a price on freedom. /s
The USA system -- both federal and state-level -- is a bungled attempt at doing all of these things simultaneously: revenue collection, grant issuance, welfare, equity, economic incentives, and monetary penalties. And the results show: it's woefully unfit at any of these objectives, and the agencies responsible for administering this convoluted mess are left to divine the intended objective from the law and hopefully reach some sort of sane conclusion.
As a reference for fellow Americans, the idea that child welfare is administered through the tax system is not common through the world. That is to say, a "child tax credit" would just be a issued directly from a government agency, with maybe one form to set up direct deposit. Same with economic incentives: rather than a "refundable heat pump tax credit", other countries just give out grants when you show that you've met the qualifications. Remarkably, the USA already have such a system, in the form of municipalities or local utilities that either issue these grants themselves, or work with local suppliers to implement point-of-sale discounts (eg LED light bulbs).
Separating such concerns from the taxation system means that people who don't file taxes -- usually because they're below the 0% tax rate, which would be the standard deduction at the USA federal level -- can still get the full benefit of welfare and grants. A negative example is when a tax credit is "non-refundable", meaning that if the taxpayer doesn't pay enough tax, they lose the benefit of the credit. Nobody is better off for this.
It also avoids the absurd result where the tax authorities have to figure out whether a particular piece of HVAC equipment meets the qualifications set out in the tax code. The IRS (federal) or equivalent state agency does not specialize in such determinations, so there will inevitably be mistakes if they have to do this. Instead, an agency like the USA Dept of Energy would be much more qualified to administer that task.
Finally, because of the litany of such "elective" tax credits or deductions -- meaning that whether they apply or not is highly dependent on preconditions -- it makes it functionally impossible for the tax agency to give taxpayers a prefilled tax return form. How can the IRS know if you bought a heat pump this year? Or had a child? Or paid points on a home mortgage loan?
Simplifying the tax code is a prerequisite for prefilled tax forms, but not by the typical neoliberal nonsense of flat-tax rates or whatever. Instead, it comes when the tax agency can focus on doing a single job -- revenue collection -- and work towards doing that task well.
Bamboo is right, you could do it all for the price of a stamp if you grabbed the paper forms and filled them out, but you risk missing deductions that you don't know to look for, or making an error that gets you on legal trouble.
Taxes were easy when I was a young broke adult, and I would do them myself on paper, but once I started owning things and having kids, the extra refund money that a professional or software would find was worth more than the cost to get their help.
I haven't done my taxes on paper in over 20 years.
Also use freetaxUSA. 3 years in and its super easy
Was it really $15.99 or is the marketing page hiding hidden costs for some situations (assuming you don't need support or audit defense).
The $16 is if you're also filing state taxes with it. Federal is still free.
I wonder how many people actually only do federal with it? 2%?
I believe that people who live in states without income tax don't need to file state taxes (at least usually, maybe there are exceptions). That includes:
- Alaska
- Florida
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Washington
- Wyoming
If my math is correct, about 21% of the US population live in one of those states.
Yep. As a Washington resident, I was flabbergasted through this thread. Pay? What? It's Freetaxusa
Yup… free federal filing, $15.99 for state, extra for actual support. It’s fantastic
It really is 16 if you pay with a card, we just did ours a few weeks ago. Been with them for about 5 years now, everything's been great.
I've used it for multiple years. There's an option to pay using your refund, which incurs a fee. Direct deposit also incurs a fee. Otherwise it's as advertised
I think it was $15.99 to file the state taxes. There are some extra services like you mentioned that you can sign up for, but you can ignore them. In the past Turbo would say Free file, but then interrupt you "looks like you have dependents, that's going to cost you $20, oh no, you have stocks? Another $20 to file. Kids in college? That's another $20."
None of that this year! Already got my refund back too, so it's just as quick as Turbo usually was.
Amazing, yeah, that's my hesitation with switching and investing time, to get charged at the checkout.
I thought the same thing, but I decided to see it through, and was very happy with the lack of shenanigans.
Prefilled? Amazing. Clearly a country not beholden to the billion dollar tax prep industry.
As a form of silent protest in USA I only fill out a 1040EZ. Its the most basic free file. I'm certain I'm missing out on tax incentives with my retirement investments but also not adding other earnings. My protest is, you have the information. Audit my ass of you want more. We'll see how it works out.
Norway, by the way.
I get an SMS each year whenever my preliminary taxes are ready. I then log in and get presented with a form listing different sections relevant to me: loans, paychecks, any dependants, etc. Each section comes prefilled with all the numbers, so I just have to glance over to make sure they didn't miss anything or any relevant deductions.
I can submit a correction if some of the numbers are wrong for some reason, or add any sections that they've missed.
The deductions in my OP were mostly about me and my SO having fours kids together. By default, deductions like this is split 50/50, so we tried moving the numbers to see if we managed to get a better total. Turned out the difference was neglible.
Had to add my travel time to get the added deduction. Spent several minutes before filing it. Would be nice if they could estimate that though, as they already know where I live and work, so you'd only have to add variations to a standard based on where you work or something like that.