After ProPublica reported on TurboTax’s deceptive campaign to stop Americans from filing for free, the FTC began investigating Intuit and last year sued to stop TurboTax’s “free” ad campaign. In May 2022, the company reached a $141 million settlement with state attorneys general to pay lower-income Americans who were “unfairly charged” for filing their taxes. Further, the company’s TurboTax home page misled consumers into thinking they were eligible for the “freemium” service, and its product and pricing screen didn’t mention the Free File product, “impeding consumers from learning of its existence,” states claimed. The service would be free for about one-third of U.S. taxpayers, while the IRS Free File products are free for about 70%, according to the announcement. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have signed onto the agreement.

Depending on your tax situation, you might need more than just a Form 1040 to complete your taxes — which may require an upgrade. However, H&R Block Free Online includes more tax forms than the TurboTax Free Edition, meaning people can file more situations for free with H&R Block Online. If your personal situation is more complex, and you do need to upgrade, we’ll clearly explain the reason.

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The checks will come from the $141 million settlement, minus $2.5 million in administrative costs. We previously recommended IRS Free File tax software provided by Intuit TurboTax. Currently, the IRS offers its Free File service through seven providers, including OLT and FileYourTaxes.com, which we do not recommend. But since we haven’t tried them all yet, we don’t feel comfortable recommending any of them. Like TurboTax, H&R Block is also now asking for permission to use the specific information in your tax return to target you with personalized ads.

With a tax professional, you don’t have to do form-by-form price comparisons or hope that you fit inside an income or age cap—they’ll take whatever you have, and most are clear up-front about what they’ll charge based on your specific situation. The best way to file your tax return is https://turbo-tax.org/ electronically, and you should do it as soon as possible. When you file electronically, you’ll get your refund quickly, and doing so can help thwart identity theft. As of February 2023, the IRS still had a backlog of over 1.8 million 2021 returns and late-filed prior-year returns.

How to File Taxes for Free Without TurboTax

Finally, a confirmation page said the state filing fee was $5, but when we accepted the prompt, the price jumped to $45. Because of these problems, we wouldn’t recommend using H&R Block for returns that involve more than just a couple of common forms. The software does, however, provide a better experience than the majority of cheap online tax tools we’ve tested, with solid in-app help explanations and a user-friendly interface (for the most part).

“We believe this settlement with the state attorneys general and the District of Columbia also addresses the issues at the core of the FTC litigation, making that lawsuit entirely unnecessary,” Intuit’s McLean said. “Nevertheless, we are https://turbo-tax.org/turbotax-2020-4/ fully prepared to litigate with the FTC to prove the merits of our case.” Intuit admitted no wrongdoing as part of the agreement and expects minimal impact to its business from implementing changes, according to a company statement.

Credits & Deductions

For Blucora, H&R Block, and TaxSlayer, the monthly average of customers with incomes over $100,000 were 26 percent, 25 percent, and 23 percent respectively. Most consumers will receive between $29 and $30, the site says, although some individuals who filed for all three of the years covered by the settlement could get about $85, the New York attorney general said. The payment is based on the number of years a consumer used the TurboTax product and whether they qualify. Or you can browse the 11 free file programs offered by On-LineTaxes, 1040Now, ezTaxReturn.com, FileYourTaxes.com, TaxAct, FreeTaxUSA and TaxSlayer. Do not store tax documents with services such as Dropbox or Google Drive unless you encrypt the files, and always encrypt your local drive.

So we recommend it primarily for those with simple returns who are willing to spend extra time puzzling over how to enter their info in exchange for totally free federal and state filing. Under the hood, all tax software platforms—even those the tax pros use—fill in the same IRS forms and (usually) use the same rounding method to calculate the amount you owe or the amount of your refund. The biggest differences among the tax-filing options lie in how thorough their questions are, whether they ask the right questions, and how pleasant or taxing (pun intended) the experience is. In our tests, we found H&R Block’s help screens and in-app guidance to be nearly as good as TurboTax’s. However, the software was also more error-prone, especially as the complexity of returns increased. We ran into a couple of problems trying to hunt down stray forms, and the automated chat help was ineffective.