Somewhere in a filing cabinet or a browser tab sits a 2025 federal return that was started in April and never finished. The household filed for more time, the deadline stopped feeling urgent, and the paperwork went quiet. What a lot of those filers have not been told is that the free federal filing software they skipped in February is still open to them, and that the income line for it runs well above the typical assumption about who counts as low income.
The $89,000 line, and what sits on either side of it
The program splits into two tracks, and the split is the only place income matters. One track is guided software from private partners that ask questions and do the math. The other is a set of electronic forms a filer completes without hand-holding.
The IRS sets the guided software track at an adjusted gross income of $89,000 or less and puts Free File Fillable Forms at any income level, which means no household is actually shut out of filing federally at no cost. The tradeoff on the second track is real: the forms offer limited calculations, no state filing, and no software walking anyone through a credit they might have missed. On the first track, some partners include free state returns, and each partner sets its own additional criteria on income, age and state residency, so the offer a household sees will not be identical to a neighbor’s.
Two groups get treated separately inside the guided track. Spanish-language filing is available through a single participating partner, open to residents of a defined list of 36 states who are between 17 and 85 with adjusted gross income of $89,000 or less. Active-duty military members are the exception to the partner-by-partner criteria: the IRS says they receive free federal return preparation using any guided provider as long as their income falls within the program threshold, rather than having to hunt for a partner whose own rules happen to fit.
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October 15 is a filing deadline, not a payment deadline
This is where extension filers get hurt, and it is a distinction the IRS states plainly rather than burying. Requesting an extension buys time to file without a late-filing penalty, and nothing else. The agency’s own wording is that the extension is only for filing the return.
Any tax owed was due back in April, and the extension did not move that date. The IRS’s Free File page states the sequence directly: file the extension and pay any balance due by the April 15 deadline to avoid penalties, then use the additional months to complete the return itself. A household expecting a refund is in a different position, since nothing is owed and nothing accumulates. The free software carries no charge either way, and it is the same tool used to file the return that finally settles a balance.
The IRS restated the availability window in June, telling taxpayers who had missed the spring deadline that they could still file a 2025 federal return at no cost and that more than 109 million taxpayers are eligible for free guided tax preparation. That is not a niche program hiding in a corner of the tax code. It is a majority of filers.
Starting anywhere but IRS.gov can cost you the free part
The most expensive mistake in this program has nothing to do with income. It is the route in. The IRS instruction is to always begin at IRS.gov, because a taxpayer who goes directly to a partner’s commercial website will not get the Free File version of that company’s product, even if the same company is a partner and the same household qualifies.
Going through the government’s own front door also brings rules that do not apply on the commercial side. Partners in the program are barred from upselling additional services or hidden fees, and from selling bank products such as refund anticipation loans or audit protection. Member companies agree to pay any IRS penalties or interest caused by an error in their software’s calculations. Filers should know the limits too: only the current year’s return can be filed this way, so back taxes and prior-year returns fall outside it, and a partner may charge for a state return.
The practical hurdle for someone returning to an abandoned return is usually identity verification rather than income. To sign an electronic return, a filer needs last year’s adjusted gross income or a five-digit self-select PIN, and the IRS says a first-time filer with no prior return can enter $0 as the prior-year figure. Anyone who cannot find last year’s number can pull it from an online IRS account or request a tax return transcript by mail. Once the return goes in, confirmation arrives by email when the IRS accepts it, and a return that gets rejected can in most cases be corrected and resubmitted electronically before the deadline. An amended return can also be prepared through the same guided software a household used originally, though the fillable-forms track cannot handle one.
The IRS Free File page, last reviewed on June 12, 2026, is the only place those terms are guaranteed to apply, and it is the page the agency points to in every reminder it issues. For a household with an unfinished return and a deadline in the middle of October, that page is the whole to-do list.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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