“The kicker is that free tax software is from Intuit who will try very hard to make sure that you either don’t find it in the first place, or try to get you to pay for it and upsell you on something that should be free.”
The free option comes from the company that profits when you can’t find it. So someone rebuilt the federal forms in Excel, one tab per form. The whole tax code fits in a spreadsheet. Intuit’s business depends on you never noticing.