#TURBOTAX FREE FILE FOR FREE#
#TURBOTAX FREE FILE CODE#

Katie Hill, Katie Porter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others. We wrote about that earlier this month and the opposition to this provision by freshman Democratic Reps. The national taxpayer advocate recently said it “is failing to achieve its objectives and should be substantially improved or eliminated.” The IRS has been criticized for failing to oversee the program and the number of people using Free File has dropped by millions since it peaked in 2005.Ĭonsumer groups have long argued that the IRS should offer its own free, online tax preparation and filing, as many other countries do.īut Congress is now moving to put the Free File program into law, including its restriction on the IRS creating its own free service. It’s not exactly a secret that this Free File program isn’t working well. But they all have different requirements based on age, income and location.įinally! We clicked the “TurboTax Free File Program” link and found the actual homepage for TurboTax Freedom. Each of the 12 companies that have signed on to the deal with the IRS offer their own Free File product.

The fifth link, a government site, looked like it would take us to the actual Free File program.īut not so fast! When we clicked, and then clicked through to a second page, we found a whole new set of choices and restrictions. Now, let’s go back to our original Google search. There’s a name for internet design tactics that get users to pay for products they don’t necessarily want: dark patterns. While the orange “See If You Qualify” link did take us to the real Free File program, the blue “Start for Free” link brought us back to the version of TurboTax where we ended up having to pay. We clicked, and it brought us to this new page. The first link was from TurboTax and said “Free File Program” right in the text. Once we realized that what we really wanted was TurboTax Freedom, we simply entered that into Google: The company calls the truly free version the Freedom Edition. Is it called the Free Edition? No, that’s reserved for the widely advertised commercial products that are only free for people with the simplest taxes. This is a good time to remind you: Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, is one of the companies that has promised the IRS to offer free tax filing to lower-income Americans. It turns out that if you start the process from, it’s impossible to find the truly free version. Here’s what it looks like behind the curtain: ch: /personal-taxes/online/Įven though TurboTax could tell we were eligible to file for free, the company never told us about the truly free version.

#TURBOTAX FREE FILE FOR FREE#

In the source code, TurboTax had branded us as “NONFFA.” That stands for “Non Free File Alliance.” In other words, we were not on track to file for free after all. Even though we clicked on the “FREE Guaranteed” option and met all the requirements to file for free, the company had tagged us as a potential paying customer.

#TURBOTAX FREE FILE CODE#

We took a close look at the source code of the TurboTax website and noticed something strange. So how did we end up with a product that would make us pay? Are the house cleaner and the cashier not allowed to prepare and file their taxes for free because of their particular tax situations? No! According to the agreement between the IRS and the companies, anyone who makes less than $66,000 can prepare and file their taxes for free. We went back to and clicked on “FREE Guaranteed.” This time, we went through the process as a Walgreens cashier without health insurance, entering personal information and giving the company lots of sensitive data.Īgain, TurboTax told us we had to pay - this time because there’s an extra form if you don’t have insurance. Turns out the house cleaner didn’t qualify because he is a independent contractor.

TurboTax asked us to click through more than a dozen questions and prompts about our finances.Īfter all of that, only then did we get the bad news: TurboTax revealed this wasn’t going to be free at all. We entered extensive personal information. We started the process by creating the profile of a TaskRabbit house cleaner who took in $29,000. It contained the word “free” five times! We clicked and were relieved to see that filing for free was guaranteed.

We searched for “irs free file taxes.”Īnd we thought we found what we were looking for: Ads from TurboTax and others directing us to free products. Here’s what happened when we went looking. Email address This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Turbotax free file