IRS opening free online tax filing program to all states
IRS opening free online tax filing program to all states
I feel like this should have been released closer to tax season? Now the big filers will have 10 months to strategize and try to sabotage the use of this service before it hits their bottom line.
It was enabled with funding from the 2022 IRA, then developed in 2023, and then rolled out as a pilot program in 2024. Now that they know the pilot went well through the deadline for tax filing, they're green lighting it for 2025. I'm not sure it could have happened any quicker, unfortunately.
Obamacare website was launched at the beginning of the open enrollment window, and that was just a fraction of the us population. They now have 10 months to strategize how not to crash come April when every tax payer in the US trys to use this.
That was back in 2013, and frankly web dev has gotten a lot easier and a lot more robust at scaling since then.
They also learned from that catastrophic deployment, which is why they developed the USDS, the US digital services office, which pulls people in from startup and tech culture to guide these projects with modern practices for the executive branch.
The above is rolling out this exact service.
I bet the traffic on April 15th is going to be wild. I wonder if you get an automatic extension if the website is down when you’re trying to file?
The use cases covered by this were already covered by the free tier on services like TurboTax. They're not going to lose a dime.
Another policy win for Biden.
Guaranteed it will be so convoluted and impossible to understand you will quit and just pay someone to do your taxes.
Usability comments were positive from what I recall reading. Seeing how TurboTax turns into a manually calculate everything yourself and good luck as soon as you step outside the normal workflow, the people that would use this just might. e.g. good luck filing domestic partner filing separately in California, no real examples to lure you into their shit higher price support tiers