#Buy turbotax 2016 with state efile free#
What about that $62,000 cut-off? It turns out that while all 13 members of the Free File Alliance offer free filing to some subset of people making as much as $62,000 this year, they restrict that by age, state of residence or military status. That’s up to the budget strapped IRS.Īnd get this: Intuit only offers its Free File service to taxpayers with adjusted gross income of $31,000 or less for tax year 2015, unless they're active duty military. Bob Meighan, vice president of customer advocacy for TurboTax, responds that it is not the company’s responsibility to market the Free File Alliance product. Moreover, Intuit is barred from selling other services such as audit protection within the Freedom Edition (the company sees this as a weakness-you decide).Īnyway, the non-Free File Alliance version is what I found myself using through the TurboTax website. Turns out the Freedom Edition (the one that is part of the Free File program) supports a wider array of free tax forms. Now here's the key point, one I didn't realize last year: the TurboTax Federal Free Edition isn't actually part of the Free File program, whereas the TurboTax Freedom Edition is.
(The cut off this year is $62,000 in 2015 adjusted gross income.) They agreed to provide free filing for low- and moderate-income taxpayers, but maintained the right to each set eligibility criteria around an income threshold. The companies, Intuit included, launched a nonprofit in 2003 under threat of free tax preparation by the IRS.
#Buy turbotax 2016 with state efile software#
This was because of something called The Free File Alliance, which is comprised of 13 tax software companies. That detail and my plain vanilla finances seemed, as far as I understood things, to easily qualify me to e-file my federal return for free. I have no investments outside of my 401(k) and my apartment is a rental.īut the most important thing to know for this story is that my 2014 income was less than $60,000. My living comes from one job at a company (Forbes Media) that counts me as an employee and thus reports my wages to the Internal Revenue Service on a W-2 and provides me with access to health insurance. A few basics should tell you I’m a fairly standard Millennial taxpayer.
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