> The Free File Alliance, a private industry group, says 70% of American taxpayers are eligible to file for free. Those taxpayers, who must make less than $66,000, have access to free tax software provided by the companies. But just 3% of eligible U.S. taxpayers actually use the free program each year. Critics of the program say that companies use it as a cross-marketing tool to upsell paid products, that they have deliberately underpromoted the free option and that it leaves consumer data open to privacy breaches.

During the years I was eligible for this program, I used TurboTax for free through it and it worked fine. It was a basic version that didn’t support complex transactions such as capital gains but for most people making under 66k it would have worked fine.

Very interesting to see only 3% use it. It would probably work well for a lot more of those 70%.

The paper forms are also easy enough to do manually, but can’t be e-filed and so the refund comes slower.