File your taxes for FREE

This doesn't apply for me, but people with less than $50K income can e-file their taxes for free. That equates to saving $39.99 from not buying the TurboTax software. The California state government already offers free e-filing (I got a few seconds of fame on the TV news last year for being a guinea pig in the new state e-filing program). According to the IRS website, there are several websites offering free e-filing. I wonder why $50K is the cut off, since it doesn't seem that low. I wanted to check out these websites, but the firewall on my work laptop blocks those sites. So I went directly to TurboTax and searched for "free". Here is the link if anyone wants to e-file for free: TurboTax on-line for Federal. Only the Federal is free, so they charge you if you include the state tax (that's the catch).

I wonder if the government forces companies like TurboTax to offer their services to be free for lower income people. I doubt TurboTax likes to do things for free. It's great for people like students. I wish I had known about it back then. I wonder if younger people will grow to like it, then when they do have money, they decide it's worth the money. Or maybe I'm thinking too much about this, since the former reason is more likely than the latter.