IRS Free File To Open 2 Weeks Early

The IRS, internal revenue service, has announced the early opening of the free file. The free file will open as early as seventeenth January 2014. This is the case even though filing of 2014 taxes does not officially begin until 31st of January. In fact, reality is that the internal revenue authority is requesting tax payers to get onto the free file website which is found at IRS.gov. This is in addition to preparing tax returns using the TurboTax 2014 system.

FILE Rubber Stamp
FILE Rubber Stamp (Photo credit: Enokson)

According to the message posted by IRS, practically all tax payers are free to use the Free File option. Tax payers making an annual income of $58000 or less can use this federal income tax preparation guide and filing program. This program is free for such individuals. It is important to note that about 70 percent of all tax payers fall into this category. This is information attributed to Tim Hugo who is the executive director at the Free File Alliance.

The online version of the hard copy tax forms is the Free File Fill-able from. All tax payers can use these online forms. However, they cannot be used to pay state taxes as they only perform basic federal calculations. These forms are not dependent on an applicant’s income and hence can be used by all tax applicants. It is therefore much easier and quite fast to organize 2014 taxes.

The IRS has partnered with the Free File Alliance which is a coalition of leading tax software companies. The organization is non profit and the partnership focuses on providing the two versions of the tax forms. This association between the IRS and the free file alliance has been around since 2002. Prior to this arrangement, the IRS had an arrangement with computer firms that provided free tax filing to about 60 percent of the population.

This program was initially set for three years and then renewed for a period of about 4 years. Now, over forty million applications have been filed, including TurboTax 2014, though these programs. All these programs are however supposed to be available to taxpayers via the IRS website. However, tax payers may only participate for free through the IRS website as it costs to use individual software companies.