“Many taxpayers we’ve heard from filed their taxes in less than 30 minutes using Direct File and praised it as an easy, no cost tax filing experience.”
The IRS now lets 19 million people in 12 states file federal returns for free, directly with the government that already has their W-2s. The catch is the fence around it: W-2 income only, standard deduction, same state all year, and identity checks through ID.me. Everyone who falls outside gets routed to Free File, where eight private partners decide what free means. Filing in under 30 minutes was always possible. The tax prep industry just never had a reason to build it.