IRS Free File

Did you know that if your adjusted gross income for 2008 is $56,000 or less, you may use selected tax softwares and efile your federal taxes for free? Go here for details and make sure you access the software through the IRS’s site.

We took advantage of this program the last couple of years when we were poor college students. Using tax software certainly made it easier for us to understand the tax code and we received our refund through direct deposit within two weeks. We found TaxSlayer to work best for us and when we compared it to TurboTax, we got the same amount of deductions. We even used this when our taxes were a little more complicated, i.e. Tim owned a business, worked as an independent contractor and we had to file in multiple states with multiple W-2s. Keep in mind that if you want to use tax software to file your state taxes you may be charged, depending on the state.

We are now gathering up all of our tax documents and preparing to file online again this year. We still qualify to efile  our taxes for free, and it’s nice knowing that with all of the headaches of preparing taxes, at least we don’t have to pay for preparing them this year.