Extension filers with a 2025 federal return still outstanding have a firm cutoff in mid-October, and the Internal Revenue Service says the no-cost preparation option many assume disappeared after the spring rush is still open. Anyone whose adjusted gross income last year fell at or below $89,000 can still use guided software to finish a…

Millions of taxpayers who asked the IRS for more time this spring are now closer to the real deadline than the extension ever suggested. October 15 is the date Form 4868 actually buys, and for households still sitting on an unfinished return, the IRS Free File program remains open to help finish it without paying…

Filing correctly is only half of what many households need from the IRS; the other half is a live person on the phone when something goes wrong. During the 2026 filing season, the agency fielded 48.1 million of those calls and put a telephone assistor on the line for just 9.9 million of them. For…

The IRS offers Direct Pay for personal federal tax payments from a checking or savings account, and the agency describes the service as free and secure. Direct Pay is a payment method, not a payment plan and not a way to reduce a tax balance. Its main advantage is that it allows an eligible taxpayer…

A flood, wildfire or tornado can destroy the receipts needed to document the property it destroyed. The IRS says a missing paper trail does not end the process: bank and card statements, photographs, videos, contractor records and county files can rebuild it. The same evidence may matter for a tax return, federal assistance application or…

The Direct File pilot let taxpayers prepare and submit a federal return straight to the IRS at no cost, without a commercial software company in the loop. It is being shut down. In a report delivered to Congress this fall, the Treasury Department stated that the IRS will suspend Direct File, pointing to the program’s…

Filing a federal tax return does not have to cost a household anything, yet most people who qualified for the free option skipped it last year. The Treasury Department’s own count, delivered to Congress this fall in a report on the future of free filing, put the number of households eligible for the IRS Free…

A tax bill sent by the federal government does not require a login, a new account, or a fee just to hand the money over. The Internal Revenue Service runs a free tool called Direct Pay that moves funds straight out of a checking or savings account, using only the numbers already sitting on a…

The IRS used a routine payment reminder this week to flag a detail that catches more taxpayers than the agency probably intends: its free Direct Pay tool will not work for everyone who tries it. Anyone who has gone more than six years without filing a federal return, or who has simply never filed one,…

Treasury’s own math on the government’s free federal e-filing tool comes down to one blunt fraction: fewer than one in every 200 tax returns filed for tax year 2024 went through Direct File. That single number, buried in a report Treasury sent Congress last October, is the central justification the department gives for suspending the…