The IRS Free File program offers free federal tax preparation software to anyone earning below a set income threshold, plus free fillable forms for everyone else. Millions of eligible filers pay $50-150 for tax software every year without knowing the free option exists. Check IRS.gov/freefile before you pay for anything.
Roughly 70% of American taxpayers qualify to file their federal returns free through IRS Free File. Fewer than 5% of them do it, according to the Government Accountability Office.
That gap is no accident. Free File runs as a partnership between the IRS and a group of tax software companies, and those companies earn nothing when you file free, so they don’t advertise it. The household names left the program entirely. H&R Block exited in 2020, and TurboTax followed in 2021. The providers still in the program sell paid products on their own sites, and their free tax software tiers exist mainly to upsell you. That’s why qualified filers who land on a provider’s homepage instead of the IRS portal often reach a paid checkout anyway.
The fix is to start at IRS.gov/freefile and nowhere else. The income cap resets every year and is set high enough to cover about 70% of filers. The IRS site shows the current figure. From there, a lookup tool matches you with a partner based on your income, age, state, and military status, because each company layers its own eligibility rules on top of the program’s. Before you commit, confirm whether your match includes a free state return. Some partners do. Others charge for state filing even when the federal return costs nothing. If you earn too much for the guided software, Free File Fillable Forms accepts any income level. It’s bare-bones. You follow the form instructions and do the math yourself. But it still beats paying for forms the IRS gives away.
Tax prep is one of the few annual bills you can erase outright. Give the free option the first shot at your return every January, and keep the $50 to $150 where it belongs.
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