АҚШ Салық Төлеушілері Үшін Тегін Электрондық Декларациялар Одағы

Group of tax preparation companies in the United States

The Free File Alliance is a group of tax preparation companies which operate a public private partnership with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide free electronic tax filing services under the IRS Free File program to United States taxpayers meeting certain guidelines. The IRS stipulates filers must have an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $73,000 or less for tax year 2022 to qualify, The IRS Free File program is a compromise between the IRS and for profit tax software companies that enables lower and middle income filers to file their taxes for free while ensuring the IRS does not develop its own free to use tax software that would compete with private, for profit tax software companies. Free File Alliance is a 501(c)(4) organization registered as Free File, Inc., and based in Clifton, Virginia. Its executive director is Tim Hugo. While many of the Free File Companies offer free state income tax returns, some companies do charge additional fees of $10 to $30 to electronically file state returns. As of the 2021 tax filing season, the two most used tax filing software programs (TurboTax and H&R Block) no longer participate in the Free File program. With the two largest members of the Free File Alliance ending their participation in the Free File Program, there have been renewed calls for the IRS to develop and offer its own free tax filing software to taxpayers.

In a typical year, about 70% of filers (roughly 100 million people) are eligible to use Free File, but only about three million do, according to Tim Hugo, the FFA's executive director. In 2019, for example, only 2.7% of the 104 million taxpayers eligible for Free File used it, while 34.5 million taxpayers eligible for Free File actually paid for tax software offered by companies in the Free File Alliance.

A 2019 audit of the Free File system by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that "the process taxpayers must follow to participate in the Free File Program is obscure and complex, and there is a lack of adequate advertising and oversight of the Program by the IRS". Methods used by the FFA to hide its free services and steer filers towards paid services include deliberately hiding free services from Google search results, deceptively marketing commercial tax preparation services as free and then upselling users paid services even when they are eligible for Free File, not including links to Free File services on their websites (TurboTax's Free File service, for instance, was not available on TurboTax. com), using dark patterns to push users towards paid services, Despite publicly announcing their support for the changes, Intuit (the maker of TurboTax), as well as H&R Block, announced that they would be leaving the Free File Alliance.

In 2007, Alliance members agreed to remove controversial ancillary offerings such as refund anticipation loans from the program, after half of Free File users making ancillary purchases stated their purchases were not intended.