welcome back to money in life TV my name is Mike the CPA this is my sidekick
chipper today I am super excited to share with you guys where you can go
online to file your tax return for free! and how you can file your tax return
free online using the irs.gov website when I'm filming this video on January
29th of 2018 and chipper do you know why January 29th of 2018 is so amazing
no it's not because Valentine's Day is nearby it's because on the IRS stock
government website they have officially announced that you can now start filing
your 2017 tax return ok guys what I've done for you all is I've taken the time
to put together a Word document that's gonna have links and information that is
going to help you and guide you of where you can go on the irs.gov website in
order to file your tax return completely free and it's gonna talk about a lot of
the software packages that are available to you for free and it has a bunch of
other information so make sure to check that out if I'm gonna leave that as a
link in the description section down below so please make sure to check it
out and download for yourself alright guys but before we get started I
just want to take a moment to say welcome to anyone who's new here if
you're somebody who's interested in learning more about finances more about
taxes more about investing and things like that then I would highly recommend
subscribing to our Channel and if you like the video today if you find this
information helpful please do not forget to hit that like button and without
further ado ladies and gentlemen let's get down to business
all right ladies and gentlemen here we are on screen now I wanted to show you
that Word document I was just talking about this is something I've put
together for you guys and you can like I said you can download it in the
description section down below and what its gonna have for you is there's gonna
be some hyperlinks to you for you in this document that you can just click on
it's gonna take you right to the IRS on government website or in certain parts
of the website that are important to where you can go in order to file your
tax return for free now I wanted to make this video because I know a lot of
people out there in America are struggling and usually when it comes to
tax time it's just another expense they have to dish out extra money to try to
pay to buy software or pay somebody to do their taxes etc and it can be really
expensive and so what's nice is that IRS is allowed people if you if who
qualify for it this is generally for low ink lower income individuals okay though
these are the people who are gonna be allowed to file for free and I'll show
you so I lay out some of the rules in this document and I've taken all of this
information that you're seeing on screen is directly from the IRS website and so
if you go look at the IRS website and compare these notes to what's on there
you're gonna see it's the same stuff okay guys it's I'm not pulling a rabbit
out of a hat here it's all there for you on the IRS website but I just wanted to
compile it for you on one Word document so that you can take it with you or you
can print it out and you can even share it feel free to share this information
with a friend share this word document with people especially if you know
they're looking to save money by just not even going out and buying software
packages but just who want to try to file their return by themselves for free
online okay let's go ahead and let's look over this so so generally speaking
who qualifies for it so if your adjusted gross income was 66 thousand dollars or
less for the year then you're gonna be able to qualify for one of the free
software packages on the IRS website to a file your tax return and that's kind
of what they mean when filing for free is one it's free to transmit it to the
federal government once you've prepared your tax return
online and secondly they're giving you a variety of software packages that you
can use for free in order to do this but as you can see here not only can you
file your federal return for free but depending on what state you live in you
might be able to file a free state tax return as well so if you're in you know
if you're in any of one of these states like Arizona Georgia Iowa Kentucky you
know just name a few even New York's listed on the list these are states that
where you're you might be able to file your tax return completely free
depending on what software package you want to go with there's about I think
like ten or twelve different software packages that you can use that are gonna
be free to you on the IRS website now I've I've also included a link here to
the simple dollar which is a which is a
website where there's a blogger who writes a lot of articles and what they
did is a review on the top five free software packages that are on the IRS
government website and what I've done see how I highlighted this in yellow for
you guys well you as you go down the list here
there's you're gonna see all the software packages the ones that are
highlighted in yellow see how I've highlighted TurboTax these are the ones
that are most highly recommended by the most people that as far as I know of so
according to at least to this website and from some from some other people
I've heard of as turbo tax there's tax Act there's H&R Block software tax layer
and a smart tax and just so you guys know the free file both forms closed as
of October 20th of 2018 so just keep that in mind okay so starting from the
top here let's look at some of the free software packages that are available to
you and I if our if our income digester gross income was below sixty six
thousand dollars well you know what do they mean by adjusted gross income well
basically let me pull up a tax form here which I have so this is what a standard
tax return form looks like it's form 1040 if you go down here if your income
right here at C line 37 if that is normally below sixty six thousand
dollars for you if you count your wages so if you had you know let's say you had
fifty thousand dollars in wages and that was all of all you had well then your
adjusted gross income in this simple very super simple example you then you
would qualify in order to use one of these free software packages so that's
what they that's what they're talking about when they're saying just a gross
income just so you guys know now as you look over this spreadsheet I'm not going
to go over all of these so what I've done is I've compiled all the
information of the different software packages from the IRS website and I've
put them on this word document and you can read through here and and I want you
guys to use what you think you'd feel most comfortable with
okay now I've personally never used any one of these software packages because
I've always had access a different software as you guys know I prepare
taxes for a living in real life and so that I
other kinds of software but this is a great alternative that rather than
buying TurboTax or something this you know it might be a better alternative
then you going out and dishing out a hundred bucks or more to buy TurboTax to
do your taxes now there's all these different software packages and I'll let
you guys take the time to look over this document and just read which ones you
might want to use you know you only have to use one obviously but you know
TurboTax is probably one of the best ones to use if you can use it but I want
to point out that notice in order to use the free version of TurboTax an IRS
website you have to have thirty three thousand dollars or less than adjusted
gross income so it's it's really limited but if you if you read through this
document guys you're gonna see which software packages allow you to file
which state tax returns for free as well and so not only are you able to file
your federal return for free but you might be able to file your state tax
return as well depending on which software package you want to use and if
you click on any one of these links it's gonna take you directly to that software
package and it's gonna allow you to get started and start filing your taxes okay
so if you were just opening your internet browser you would just type in
WI RS gov hit enter and it's going to take you to their home page now just go
to click on file and see where it says individuals go ahead and click
individuals and then scroll down a little bit and see what's is popular
right below popular notice it says what free file and free is our favorite four
letter F word right so we're gonna click free file and then notice it says free
file is open for business because they officially opened on January 29th of
2018 which is the day I'm filming this video and now you're gonna notice here
there's two main areas if your income is below sixty six thousand dollars is
notice it says free file software now also notice before we click on this
notice right here if your income is above sixty six thousand dollars they
have free file both forms so even if your income is over sixty six thousand
there are some free options available to you except you're not it doesn't sound
like you're gonna be able to use free software and what they have is free file
will form so I'm let me show you that just real quick just real
briefly so if you click this if your income was above 66,000 you would come
here and you would scroll down to this area of the page click on start free
file both forms now and oh wait a minute I have Chrome out it doesn't work on
that so I've opened it up on Internet explorer and this is what it looks like
this is a page it's gonna bring you to and this is it is a very archaic type of
it's not really software but it's like an online portal you would go through on
the IRS website or I guess on free file forms calm that they're connected with
the IRS website and you you would actually just fill out actual tax forms
so it's gonna look much different than a software package because it's really not
a software package it's kind of like let me pull up that 1040 form I have your
basically if you do it this way you're gonna be filling out the information
directly like you're gonna you know there there's not gonna be very
intuitive so you kind of have to know what you're doing but you know you go
through it and say okay at $100 in taxable interest I had $50,000 in wages
you know I had $2,000 in alimony well you know what whatever it may be but
you're just gonna be working off the actual forms one at a time and of course
let me know so let me go jump back to it of course if you start here what it's
gonna have you do you're gonna create an account you're gonna create a username
and you're gonna intercept and that's where you're gonna start filling out
your tax information so that's if your income so this is if your income is
above 66,000 okay so that's that's war that's an alternative of where you could
go to still file your taxes for free if you wanted us to do it this way I just
want to show you guys real quick as you can see it I do have a brief section on
this in the word document I'm providing you guys for free is that this is kind
of what it would look like it's I know it's kind of a hard to see this picture
but in in the last hour to log in and you know go deep into this thing I
wouldn't be able to show you the actual form but this is kind of the input of
what it would look like of when you're actually filling this out is right there
but I've there's also user guides and instructions to help you with that and
I've included hyperlinks in the word documents that will take you to the user
guides and gives you line-by-line instructions of how to do
that okay so that was the free file the forms option but let's go back and now
let's look at some of the software packages of available to you guys so
that you can get familiar are acquainted with what's out there for you so your
we're going to click start free file now notice here's all the different software
packages available to you there's easy tax return com there's tax layer 1040
com free tax USA there's turbo tax there's file your taxes calm so there's
all these software packages you can use you know I'll be honest with you guys
they probably in my opinion what I've heard the most positive reviews about is
turbo tax or probably the H&R Block software that's available on here as
well if you qualify to use that one the only reason I say that they might be
better choices for most people if you're able to use it is because they've
probably have their software more built out more structured because there's
large companies who've built up their software over time and it might be a
little bit more user-friendly than some of these other ones so let's look at
turbo tax real quick ok so if you click on the turbo tax it's gonna take you
right to this home pages turbo tax and you can click here to see if you qualify
and you can just click yeah it says did you make less than thirty three thousand
dollars this year and adjusted gross income if if it's yes you hit yes and
then you can start your special version of their software for free and start
filing your tax return but if you're honest if you're like I don't know which
software package to pick there's this cool free file software lookup tool you
can click on just click on this lookup tool and and right here I'll say ok
what's your age so like I'm you know I'm 32 so it says what is your estimated
2017 adjusted gross income so let's pretend my estimated income is 50,000
and it says you go what select your residence well I'm in California so I
know that's not gonna be on their list of Free File State returns but that's me
it says are you eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit I am NOT did your
spouse receive military pay no and it says if you want to file a free state
return select your state otherwise click continue so
so look at notice so I selected California notice it's not on here but
here are all the free state tax returns that are available on the website so
that these are your if you live in any one of these states you're probably
gonna be able to file your state tax return for free as well but for me I'm
just gonna click continue at this point and but voila it's gonna tell me my free
federal return only options good because I'm in California I can't get the free
state return right but these are the software packages that's gonna tell me I
could use for my situation based on my adjusted gross income etc and so notice
notice TurboTax on my list because my I put that $50,000 on was my income so it
was too high for it but I can use the H&R Block one so now I can just click on
the HTR block one and voila here here's it's gonna take me to this
website on HTR block so the point of this video guys is to really show you
that there is options out there for you in terms of free software especially if
you're on a lower income the lower income scale especially in terms of what
the IRS considers to be lower income I mean it you might as well take advantage
of it if you if you don't if you're somebody who doesn't mind trying to
prepare your tax return for by yourself and your tax returns fairly simple like
all you have is a w-2 from a job like you have one job and that's it you know
you don't have like family you don't have like real estate investments you
don't have you don't have all these like multiple brokerage accounts things like
that if your tax return is very bare-bones and basic I bet you these
software packages anything any one of these will should work for you and what
I would recommend doing is you know you can go to their website and just kind of
explore you know let me open up tax layer real quick regardless of what
software packages you guys want to use find one and try and stick with it okay
try to try to stick with it if you can if you like it because that's over time
it's gonna become easier and easier and easier but the point is though guys it's
free it's absolutely free to do it this way so if you don't mind learning a
little bit of what what the software is like and just filing your tax return
through here and your income is black and set below 66
and then you're gonna be good to go you're gonna be able to file your tax
return for free every year and in something like I said if you're in
depending on what state you live in you might be able to file a completely free
tax return so it just depends on your situation so I just wanted to show you
that this is available and like I said I will include a link to this document in
the description section down below this video
I'll include a box luck drop link to it so make sure to check it out and I'd
really be curious to know guys like I said I've never used any one of these
software packages I've been TurboTax personally but which one of these
software packages would you be most interested in trying would it be
TurboTax would it be Tax Act you know what it what have you guys heard is a
good software package that you can file your tax return for free with I would
love to know so please drop that in the comment section down below I hope you
guys found this video helpful and I just wanted to let you guys know that this
information is out there now don't forget that I prepare a lot of tax
videos during this time of year so I have videos on education credits and tax
deductions I have videos on how to extend your tax return so I'm gonna leak
all those up in the description section as well so make sure to check out the
playlist my tax playlist on my channel I also have a video that covers all of the
2018 tax updates for individuals and people are finding that video very
helpful just explore the iron stock government website there's a lot of
great information on here and pretty much everything you need to know is on
here of what to do they have you know help sections they have customer service
support so there's a lot of information available to you if you just want to use
it and check it out okay guys thank you so much for taking time out of your day
to watch this video it was great as always hanging out with all of you all
of your smiling faces out there you guys are hungry for more knowledge more
information especially about taxes and so I hope I hope you found this video
helpful and if you can't qualify for it because your incomes too high well maybe
you know somebody who does so share this information with somebody who can use
one of these free software packages it will save them a lot of money and
especially if their tax returns super simple I'm I bet you they're going to be
able to that's pretty easily so I encourage you
to share this with others who might be able to use this even if you can't I
love you all and I will see you in the next video bye guys peace