The first time I used FreeFillableForms, it was also my first time doing taxes manually. Reading all the instructions and then going off and computing whether or not the AMT applies to me, researching whether I was eligible for this and that deduction, etc was very time consuming. I estimate it must have taken me over 12 hours which was definitely not worth my time financially, but I did it anyway as a matter of principle.
THEN I ran into a nasty snag: I had put a "0" in a bunch of the fields that I'd decided didn't apply to me, but the IRS validation script expected those fields to be blank and repeatedly rejected my submissions with cryptic error messages about form validation errors. It takes at least a day to hear back after you submit, so it took me weeks after I was "done" with my taxes before I could figure out the problem and get all the fields changed from zeros to blanks that the IRS needed in order to actually accept my taxes.
>I think people think they are "painful" because they need to read and comprehend more.
That's part of it, but FreeFillableForms is not user-friendly at all. The whole federal tax process is an absolute mess. Doing my state taxes is so much easier, thanks to CalFile doing 99% of the work for me. It's a shining example of what our federal tax returns process should be like.