There’s a free tax program, but few people are apparently taking advantage of it. Pennygem’s Justin Kircher has the story.
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00:00 There's a free tax program, but few people are apparently taking advantage of it.
00:08 The bad news is that tax season kicks off on January 27th.
00:11 But the good news for those making under $69,000 per year is that there's a free program available
00:17 for state and federal returns.
00:19 According to MarketWatch, this free software service is available on at least 10 tax preparation
00:24 sites, including popular ones like H&R Block and TurboTax.
00:29 The IRS says that since it was first offered in 2003, an estimated $1.7 billion was saved
00:35 by those who took advantage of it.
00:37 However, an IRS watchdog called Taxpayer Advocate Service says that only about 2.5 million returns,
00:43 or less than 2 percent of individual returns, actually used it.
00:47 In an investigative report, ProPublica alleged that Intuit, which owns TurboTax and H&R Block,
00:53 buried their free file program links from users by taking measures such as using codes
00:58 to hide them from search engines.
01:00 The companies denied the allegations in the report, explaining to MarketWatch that they
01:04 were attempting to expand their free file program participation.
01:08 For its part, the IRS said it would look at changes to try and make the private and public
01:12 partnership more accessible to users.
01:15 Taxpayers who meet the income criteria for free filings can find links on the irs.gov
01:20 site.
01:21 [music]