So you mainly want to avoid Intuit owned companies and H&R Block. They alone spent millions per year to lobby against easy and free filing for taxpayers.
Then there’s the ACTR (American Coalition Of Taxpayer Rights) who spend $100s of thousands a year lobbying for the same (and are made up by 14 members:
Edit: Started a post in /c/asklemmy to find out alternatives. Tax Act was my go-to company, but they’ve joined the ACTR at some point, so they’re a no-go.
Edit 2: Checking out some older reddit threads on the subject, FreeTaxUSA may be the best option so far. FreeTaxUSA are owned by Tax Hawk which is a member of the ACTR, however of all the ones i’ve checked so far, they are the cheapest (free Federal and $15 state), and at least they’re not one of the top lobbying companies like Intuit(Turbo Tax/Credit Karma tax services), H&R Block, or Jackson Hewitt.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-direct-file-update-free-secure-irs-run-electronic-filing-option-on-track-to-be-available-in-2024-as-a-limited-pilot
If you don’t qualify for the pilot, you can also find out what other tax filing companies do not lobby to keep taxes hard to figure out and file.
So you mainly want to avoid Intuit owned companies and H&R Block. They alone spent millions per year to lobby against easy and free filing for taxpayers.
Then there’s the ACTR (American Coalition Of Taxpayer Rights) who spend $100s of thousands a year lobbying for the same (and are made up by 14 members:
https://www.americancoalitionfortaxpayerrights.org/about/
Intuit
H&R Block
Tax Act
OnLine Taxes
Wolters Kluwer
Tax Hawk
Liberty Tax
Drake Software
Jackson Hewitt
also the following financial institutions:
Netspend
Republic Bank
TPG Santa Barbara
pathward
Edit: Started a post in /c/asklemmy to find out alternatives. Tax Act was my go-to company, but they’ve joined the ACTR at some point, so they’re a no-go.
https://lemmy.world/post/8447282
Edit 2: Checking out some older reddit threads on the subject, FreeTaxUSA may be the best option so far. FreeTaxUSA are owned by Tax Hawk which is a member of the ACTR, however of all the ones i’ve checked so far, they are the cheapest (free Federal and $15 state), and at least they’re not one of the top lobbying companies like Intuit(Turbo Tax/Credit Karma tax services), H&R Block, or Jackson Hewitt.