IRS Plans to Make Free Tax Filing Permanent | Hacker News Reader

IRS Plans to Make Free Tax Filing Permanent

cnn.com

44 pointscodegeek15 comments

Interesting to see how this impacts FreeTaxUSA (https://www.freetaxusa.com/)? I used them for the first time this year to file federal and state taxes and was highly impressed! I'd been an online TurboTax user for over 10 years and had used their COTS version for many years before that. It kept getting more and more expensive and each year the UI changed and introduced dark patterns to get me to buy more shit I didn't need. Fuck TurboTax, I'm on the FreeTaxUSA train now.

Same. Was on TurboTax but switched to FreeTaxUSA.

Wonderful UX and it was faster than TurboTax to file.

Interesting to see how this affects the “free” in FreeTaxUSA if IRS free tax doesn’t work for you.

New York was a state in the IRS roll-out, so I looked at using it for my simple tax return. Surprised to learn I couldn’t use it with my New York Marketplace health care plan.

Marketplace health insurance is more complicated than you think. The IRS instructions for the necessary form take up 20 pages. If I were the IRS, I would not implement it in a MVP version either.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8962.pdf

> But there is no income threshold – unlike the existing Free File Program, which is currently only available to taxpayers who earn $79,000 or less. That program is provided by an alliance of eight different private companies and has historically had a low usage rate.

Free File Fillable Forms is free to everyone, though it isn't a guided wizard like this new system sounds like: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...

I've been using it for years, have never paid to file taxes. Claiming this new system makes filing taxes free is just false.

> Claiming this new system makes filing taxes free is just false.

Who is supposedly claiming that? At least the article doesn't and also nobody in this thread.

It's in the part I quoted, where it indicates the only existing free option is the one with the income limit.

No, it isn't. It says that the program called "Free File" has a limit but nothing about free filing.

If they were being truthful they wouldn't be comparing solely to the one with an income limit. That entire paragraph is written as if the income-limited one is the only other option.

The new program is called Direct File. I believe it does have a guided wizard, and it is free. It is different from fillable forms. It is also different from the existing (aka previous, but also existing in parallel) income-restricted Free File program.

This is great news. I used it this tax year to file the form for an automatic extension, saving a trip to the post office and the cost of a certificate of mailing.

> Next year, the IRS plans to open the program to some taxpayers in all states and Washington, DC.

This is great, which means it covers states with income tax as well.

> This is great, which means it covers states with income tax as well

Does it? State taxes are not the same as the IRS forms - I don't believe this will enable you to file state tax returns using the same process. It may actually make it harder to file state returns, since you may have to use a separate program and re-enter a lot of form data.

Currently state returns are a paid add-on for places like FreeTaxUSA. I don't see that changing here unless I missed something?

How about just get rid of income tax altogether and go to consumption?

It is really hard and expensive to collect income taxes, not to mention invasive, and easy to abuse by elites.

I refuse to believe good things like this can happen anymore, so this is obviously hallucination.

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