So, do you qualify for TurboTax Free Edition? That depends o your income and the complexity of your tax situation. ( source) However, we must emphasize that the Free Edition is for simple tax returns only. In fact, TurboTax claims that an average of over 10 million taxpayers (students, low income, seniors, etc.) use the Free Edition every year. The most popular way to file Federal and State taxes free is the TurboTax Free Edition.
TurboTax FREE Edition: Who Qualifies? *Click to see if you can file FREE at TurboTax free file: Free Edition | Military | Low Income | Uber | Seniorsġ. Here are 4 ways to file your taxes free with TurboTax:
See if you qualify at .” Hmmm… So, who can actually file their Federal and State taxes with TurboTax free of charge? Yes, but please direct your attention to the fine print at the very end of the commercial that states, “TurboTax Free Edition is for simple U.S. Free, free, free, free!” So, I’d say that TurboTax strongly implies that you can file for free, right? In fact, this one says “free” 23 times in a 30-second commercial! In case it’s not clear enough, they end by saying, “That’s right, TurboTax Free Edition is free. In the meanwhile, Intuit is currently facing investigations over its practices leading people to pay for what is legally a free service.Is TurboTax really free? During tax season you can’t miss the myriad ads for TurboTax Free Edition. But the IRS isn’t addressing those sorts of tricks with its new restrictions, so it’s quite possible Intuit and other tax prep companies will have plenty of other ways to make their money. And TurboTax had also deliberately targeted students and low-income users with the paid version of their service, moving necessary forms like student loan interest deduction into the “Deluxe” tier. Some of the links in the free version of TurboTax would link to the paid version, tricking you into paying more than you should. You couldn’t access the free version from at all.
When ProPublica published their groundbreaking report in April, they found that TurboTax’s main page didn’t even link to the page that lets you file for free. The new addendum also requires all these tax preparation companies to give their truly free options a specific badge: “IRS Free File program delivered by ,” so you can tell them apart from other versions which might sneakily require you to pay. In return, the IRS agreed to not make its own free filing software, something that the tax preparation companies thought could be a big competitor to their business.
The Free File program initially said that filing software had to allow lower- and middle-income taxpayers to be able to file for free. Tax industry lobbying was how the IRS’s Free File was initially created, with the IRS agreeing to leave it up to those companies. But in the United States, Intuit has spent millions each year lobbying against these simpler systems which would eliminate the need for their services. The government uses data it already has on your income to fill out your taxes. In several other countries, filing your taxes is a lot easier. They’ve also eliminated a restriction against the IRS making its own filing software.
On Monday, the IRS released an addendum to its Free File program - the agreement with tax preparation companies intended to keep tax filing free - that now prohibits these companies from hiding the pages that allow you to file for free from Google and other search engines. Now, ProPublica reports that the IRS is taking steps against this. This made it harder for users to find the free versions online, and many people ended up paying to file their taxes when they really didn’t have to. They, along with H&R Block, went so far as to keep the free versions from showing up in search engine results. Earlier this year, ProPublica published a report showing how Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, was misleading users into paying to file their taxes - something that’s supposed to be free in the first place for many.