FreeTaxUSA 2024 (Tax Year 2023) Review (2024)

If your budget is tight, FreeTaxUSA should be your top contender when choosing a tax preparation service. You can use it to file your federal taxes for free, and state returns cost only $14.99. It supports all major IRS forms and schedules. It's fast, easy to use, and provides more help than expected from a free product covering so much ground. FreeTaxUSA is an especially good bargain if you have to file as self-employed (many of the best tax preparation services charge hefty fees if you have to file a Schedule C).For free federal filing in 2024, FreeTaxUSA is our Editors’ Choice winner. If you're willing to spend more, Intuit TurboTax offers the best overall tax filing experience, while has the best context-sensitive help.

What's New in FreeTaxUSA?

The most notable addition to FreeTaxUSA for the 2023 tax year, beyond the usual feature and help enhancements, is support for the 1099-B and form 8949 file import for stock and crypto transactions. The company behind FreeTaxUSA has also revamped its user interface since last year, making it faster and more effective. In addition, you can now pay your taxes with a credit card, which was previously not an option.

How Much Does FreeTaxUSA Cost?

FreeTaxUSA is free for federal returns (hence its namesake) and $14.99 for state. The Deluxe version ($7.99) adds advanced support. For $39.99, you can ask both federal and state tax questions of a professional by phone, chat, or screen share.

Cash App Taxes has always been free for both federal and state returns, but support is minimal. FreeTaxUSA offers much deeper online guidance. Most tax software vendors provide free versions, but these cover only the most basic tax situations. To report self-employment income and expenses, you sometimes have to pay over $100 for your federal return and more for state returns. So, considering what you get, FreeTaxUSA charges comparatively low rates.

Is FreeTaxUSA Safe to Use?

As an authorized IRS e-file provider, FreeTaxUSA says it meets or exceeds the security requirements outlined by the IRS. Since the site uses SSL certificates, your connection is encrypted, and sensitive information should be safe. The company also complies with rigorous data security standards to protect against theft of your payment information. Privacy practices are reviewed annually. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is supported.

How Does FreeTaxUSA Work?

Like its competitors, including Jackson Hewitt and Liberty Tax, FreeTaxUSA uses a lengthy wizard-like tool that asks simple, understandable questions about your income and expenses. You supply answers by checking boxes, choosing options from a list, or entering data, and the site does all necessary calculations.

Various forms of help are available on the site itself. When you finish answering questions, FreeTaxUSA transfers data to any state returns you must submit and takes a careful pass through your return to look for errors and omissions. Finally, it generates the finished product—your tax return on official IRS tax forms, ready to file.

How Do You Get Started With FreeTaxUSA?

Once you create an account, you can import data from the previous year from FreeTaxUSA or a competing product like . Or you can start from scratch.

A step-by-step interview asks for personal details about you, your spouse and dependents, and your filing status. You move on to income, starting with importing or entering data from any W-2s you received. The income home page lists every type of income you might have to claim, from interest and dividends to investment sales to small business (including gig work) income. There’s also a section for uncommon income, like money earned from gambling, royalties, and estates or trusts. You select the ones that apply to you and work through their questions. FreeTaxUSA handles credits and deductions the same way.

(Credit: TaxHawk/PCMag)

What Kind of Help Does FreeTaxUSA Offer?

FreeTaxUSA gives you help in numerous ways, though support is not as verbose as what you get from TurboTax. Most fields that you have to fill out have links to good, clear explanations of what’s needed, though sometimes more would be helpful, like when you’re reporting investment sales. The site does include a detailed navigation outline with links, which no other online tax service does.

You get proactive guidance as FreeTaxUSA introduces topics, explaining the type of information it's requesting but also calling out common errors that taxpayers make and helping you avoid them. You can search for a topic from any page to see a lengthy list of brief, context-sensitive responses explaining both the concept and its location on your return. FreeTaxUSA tends to have more, shorter explanations in its help files, whereas competitors often have lengthier articles. Both approaches can work. And the site’s Where Do I Enter…? tool is unique among its competitors. It’s a long, alphabetical list of links to all forms and tax topics on the site.

Email and chat help are available for technical questions, and you can get tax guidance from a CPA or EA via live chat, screen share, and phone for $39.99.

How Does FreeTaxUSA Deal With Self-Employment Income and Expenses?

As mentioned, FreeTaxUSA is one of two online tax prep apps that lets you fill out a Schedule C form for free. This is a real boon for sole proprietors like Uber drivers and Etsy sellers who might save $100 or more from sites like TurboTax andthat charge extra to file Schedule C. Those tax prep services provide more guidance for sole proprietors than FreeTaxUSA does. Still, if you follow the site’s instructions carefully and use its help resources, FreeTaxUSA may be all you need.

The Schedule C section of FreeTaxUSA asks a few preliminary questions and then provides fields and boxes where you enter the corresponding information from your 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC forms. You can’t upload copies of the forms and have the data automatically read and entered like you can with TurboTax. Any income received that was not reported on one of these two forms (including 1099-K totals) gets entered on another page.

(Credit: TaxHawk/PCMag)

Once you report all your income, you enter the amount you spent on common business expenses by category, like office expenses, advertising, utilities, and travel. You can also list miscellaneous expenses. If you haven’t been organizing and storing your tax-deductible business costs throughout the year, settle in for a long session. Additional pages collect information about costs related to vehicles, health insurance, and home office, for example.

(Credit: TaxHawk/PCMag)

How Does FreeTaxUSA Handle Credits and Deductions?

Because income comes first on the 1040 and in FreeTaxUSA, you might see a scary number at the top of the screen showing how much you owe in federal taxes rather than a refund amount. This number usually goes down as you enter information about deductions and credits. It works the same way as the income section. You go through the interview looking for any deductions and credits that apply to you, like expenses related to home ownership, charitable donations, and medical care. FreeTaxUSA then runs through miscellaneous topics, like estimated tax payments and underpayment penalties.

(Credit: TaxHawk/PCMag)

Does FreeTaxUSA Check Your Return?

After you enter all tax-related income and expenses, FreeTaxUSA offers to run your return through its Refund Maximizer, which looks for additional avenues for minimizing your income tax obligation. The site does accuracy checks throughout, like most other online tax services, but it also does a final sweep after you’ve completed your state return.

If you’re not getting a refund but rather owe the IRS, you have multiple options for paying the balance due. You can pay through FreeTaxUSA using a credit card or setting up a direct withdrawal from your bank. You can also pay the IRS directly by credit/debit card or bank account at the Direct Pay site.

(Credit: TaxHawk/PCMag)

Can You Do Your Taxes on Your Phone With FreeTaxUSA?

Yes, you can do your taxes from your phone, but the bigger the phone, the better. There’s no app for FreeTaxUSA. The site is optimized for mobile, so you just sign in through your phone’s web browser. The experience is much like on the big screen version, though the pages resize vertically and require a lot of scrolling. The navigation and the page sequence are the same. I had no trouble going back and forth between the mobile site and the desktop web app, though I preferred working on my desktop. If you’re used to using your phone for business and leisure apps, FreeTaxUSA will accommodate you.

(Credit: TaxHawk/PCMag)

Your Top Choice for Free Federal Filing

FreeTaxUSA is an excellent DIY tax service for the self-employed, including gig workers, since federal filing is free and the state filing fee is so reasonable. Plenty of other people can use it, too, since it supports complex topics like rental income, investment sales, and home deductions and credits. All of this earns FreeTaxUSA our Editors' Choice award for free federal filing. is another Editors’ Choice winner this year, and so is TurboTax. Both are better options if you don't mind spending some money to get the best contextualized help (H&R Block) or to have the smoothest overall experience preparing and filing your taxes (TurboTax).

While you’re thinking about taxes, read up on seven ways to minimize your taxes and what to do if you can't pay your taxes.