In the USA, why is the Free File software only available for people earning less than $62k?
"It is very helpful to understand that Free File is not actually ""by"" the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS does indeed offer access to the program through their website, but Free File is actually a public-private partnership program operated and maintained by the Free File Alliance. Who is the Free File Alliance? Well, according to their members list: 1040NOW Corp., Drake Enterprises, ezTaxReturn.com, FileYourTaxes, Free Tax Returns, H&R Block, Intuit, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax, OnLine Taxes, TaxACT, TaxHawk, and TaxSlayer. Why the income restriction? Well, that's part of the deal the IRS struck - the program is ""dedicated to helping 70 percent of American taxpayers prepare and e-file their federal tax returns"". Technically the member companies are offering their own software to handle tax preparation, and the rule is that 70% of American's must 'qualify' for at least one product, so this adjusted gross income limit changes periodically so that 70% of the population can use it. Why restrict it at all? This was part of the give and take involved in negotiation with the businesses involved. If the program was ""everyone files for free"", then it is presumed that many reputable businesses that make the program valuable would choose not to continue to participate. In other words, they want to be able to not give away their services for free to customers who are - at least by income definition - more than capable of paying them. The IRS has said it does not want to be in the tax prep software business, so they are not offering their own free software to do the job that private companies would otherwise charge for. However, there are other restrictions to being in the program - like the fact that no business in the program can offer ""refund anticipation loans"", offer commercial services more than a certain amount of times (so they can't hound you to upgrade), and so on. Some businesses were making a killing off these, though they are pretty much solely developed to be predatory on people with the lowest incomes (and education levels, and IQ, and with cognitive disabilities, and basically anyone they could sucker into paying what were effectively absurd rates for short term loans along with inflated filing/preparation fees). Finally, Free File was partly developed as an initiative to increase the amount of digitally filed taxes and reduce the paper-based burdens of accepting and processing turns. In other words: to cut government costs, not to be a government welfare program. Even if it were, one can generally obtain commercial software for $30-$100, so the benefit to those above gross income levels is pretty minor; yearly costs to file taxes with such software for those payers would be less than 0.001% of their yearly expenses. Compared to the benefits obtainable by households living below the poverty line, fighting to cover an extra 5-30% of the population at the potential expense of having the whole program be a failure probably seemed like a more than worthwhile trade-off." Free File is not software by the IRS.  Free File is actually a partnership between the IRS and the Free File Alliance, a group of tax software companies.  The software companies have all agreed to provide a free version of their tax software for low-income taxpayers. According to the Free File Alliance FAQ, the Alliance was formed in 2002 as part of a Presidential initiative to improve electronic access to government.  You can read all the excruciating details of the formal agreement (PDF) between the IRS and the Alliance, but basically, the participating software companies get exposure for their products and the possibility of up-selling services, such as state tax return software. "Regardless of the source of the software (though certainly good to know), there are practical limits to the IRS 1040EZ form.  This simplified tax form is not appropriate for use once you reach a certain level of income because it only allows for the ""standard"" deduction - no itemization.   The first year I passed that level, I was panicked because I thought I suddenly owed thousands.  Switching to 1040A (aka the short form) and using even the basic itemized deductions showed that the IRS owed me a refund instead. I don't know where that level is for tax year 2015 but as you approach $62k, the simplified form is less-and-less appropriate.  It would make sense, given some of the great information in the other answers, that the free offering is only for 1040EZ.  That's certainly been true for other ""free"" software in the past."
"Think about the implications if the world worked as your question implies that it ""should"":  A $15 share of stock would return you (at least) $15 after 3 months, plus another $15 after 6 months, plus another after 9 and 12 months.  This would have returned to you $60 over the year that you owned it (plus you still own the share).  Only then would the stock be worth buying?  Anything less than $60 would be too little to be worth bothering about for $15? Such a thing would indeed be worth buying, but you won't find golden-egg laying stocks like that on the stock market.  Why?  Because other people would outbid your measly $15 in order to get this $60-a-year producing stock (in fact, they would bid many hundreds of dollars).  Since other people bid more, you can't find such a deal available. (Of course, there are the points others have brought up: the earnings per share are yearly, not quarterly, unless otherwise noted.  The earnings may not be sent to you at all, or only a small part, but you would gain much of their value because the company should be worth about that much more by keeping the earnings.)" &gt; My wife is trying to start a business. She has no experience at all.  Don't put in too much money. Use this as a chance to learn because she's going to have a bad experience.   &gt; She is working with the husband of a friend who is importing products from China.  Red flag #1.   &gt; He is in China and his wife is in the USA on a tourist visa (no work allowed but she works)  Red flag #2.   &gt; I have caught this guy lying or being way less than transparent many times.  You're telling me that a guy using his wife to illegaly conduct business in the US isn't above board? I'm shocked.  Shocked, I tell you.  &gt; I think he thinks others are stupid and can not easily see his misdeeds.  That could be a red flag, or he could be correctly reading the situation.  You said your wife has no experience in this arena, so why would he listen to her?   &gt; “You tried to screw with me and my wife too many times so F you”   Red flag #3.  Don't mix business with emotions.   &gt;  I am asking for a settlement or I will do everything in my power to totally screw up his life  Red flag #4.   &gt; It will never stop or improve if the second party has a less than acceptable level of honesty and transparency.  This is why contracts and lawyers exist.  In business, everyone thinks they're making out better than the person on the other end of the table.  If they didn't, they would ask for more.  There can be mutually beneficial situations, but showing all of your cards is a great way for them to be used against you during negotations.   &gt; It is a startup not big money, but us being in the USA as lawful citizens (me USA born, my wife naturalized Chinese ), we hold the risk here.  Yeah, don't knowingly break the law.  The risk is too high for you.  &gt; I lived in China for ten years. Over there, the Chinese do, in almost all cases, all they can do to screw foreigners   Red flag #5.  Why do you want to be in business with a group you think will almost always exploit you?   &gt; My wife thinks that because they are Chinese (the other party), I should be willing to accept this behavior. I totally disagree.  Red flag #6.  Don't use stereotypes to make judgment calls.   &gt; My wife wants to have her own company very badly and she is very disappointed.   Life is full of disappointment, and you can't wish for success. Well, you can, but you end up in situations like these.   &gt; Do you agree when dealing with lying business “partners” if the offenses continue, even after a warning, that all bets should be off and one should change into “screw them” mode and claw back all possible money/power via all available legal resources?  Say it with me.  CONTRACTS! CONTRACTS! CONTRACTS!  I'm not talking about a quick signature on a napkin.  I'm talking about vetted and formalized.  You have clear expectations.  You have remediation.  You have timeframes.  If they don't deliver the promised expectation then you sue them.   If you act on emotions then you are likely to do yourself more harm than good.  If you don't think you can recover what you're due, you shouldn't be in business with a shady operator to begin with.   &gt; Comments?  Talk to a lawyer.  You need to understand your risk and liability.  If you're fine, stop investing money into this venture. You'll be taken for all you're worth. I was going to comment above, but I must have 50 reputation to comment. This is a question that vexes me, and I've given it some thought in the past. Morningstar is a good choice for simple, well-organized financial histories.   It has more info available for free than some may realize.  Enter the ticker symbol, and then click either the Financials or the Key Ratios tab, and you will get 5-10 years of some key financial stats.  (A premium subscription is $185 per year, which is not too outrageous.) The American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) provides some good histories, and a screener, for a $29 annual fee. Zacks allows you to chart a metric like EPS going back a long ways, and so you can then click the chart in order to get the specific number.  That is certainly easier than sorting through financial reports from the SEC.  (A message just popped up to say that I'm not allowed to provide more than 2 links, so my contribution to this topic will end here.  You can do a search to find the Zacks website.  I love StackExchange and usually consult it for coding advice.  It just happens to be an odd coincidence that this is my first answer.  I might even have added that aside in a comment, but again, I can't comment as of yet.) It's problem, however, that the universe of free financial information is a graveyard of good resources that no longer exist.  It seems that eventually everyone who provides this information wants to cash in on it.  littleadv, above, says that someone should be paid to organize all this information. However, think that some basic financial information, organized like normal data (and, hey, this is not rocket science, but Excel 101) should be readily available for free.  Maybe this is a project that needs to happen.  With a mission statement of not selling people out later on. The closest thing out there may be Quandl (can't link; do a search), which provides a lot of charts for free, and provides a beautiful and flexible API.  But its core US fundamental data, provided by Sharadar, costs $150 per quarter.  So, not even a basic EPS chart is available there for free. With all of the power that corporations have over our society, I think they could be tabulating this information for us, rather than providing it to us in a data-dumb format that is the equivalent of printing a SQL database as a PDF!  A company that is worth hundreds of billions on the stock market, and it can't be bothered to provide us with a basic Excel chart that summarizes its own historical earnings?  Or, with all that the government does to try to help us understand all of these investments, they cannot simply tabulate some basic financial information for us? This stuff matters a great deal to our lives, and I think that much of it could and should be available, for free, to all of us, rather than mainly to financial professionals and those creating glossy annual reports. So, I disagree that yet another entity needs to be making money off providing the BASIC transparency about something as simple as historical earnings. Thank you for indulging that tangent.  I know that SE prides itself on focused answers.  A wonderful resource that I greatly appreciate. all of the unconstitutional efforts by government to eliminate hardship have only led to more hardship, corruption, and a nation which consumes more than it produces.  the citizens of the USA are not brave enough to be free and will experience the consequences.  the crumbling illusion of prosperity is supported by incredible amounts of debt, panic level low interest rates, and obscene levels of welfare and warfare.     it is not the role of government to eliminate hardship or run an economy.  an economy(including the availability of healthcare) is to be crafted by the free choices of consumers and producers.  you can't legislate prosperity.  and freedom includes the freedom to endure hardship. Plenty of folks earn $300k/year from salary alone, and keep in mind this is household income. If you and your spouse are both educated and have a well paying jobs it's not all that difficult to hit that mark. You're right about FICA (I forgot it is calculated on gross income and not Adjusted Gross Income). State tax rate in that bracket still should be nominal or zero depending on the state. Sales tax... things cost what they cost.  &gt; Regardless, 70% of minimum wage isn't enough to cover a car, a child, a good vacation, a serious health care problem, an aging parent, or a modest retirement.  Social safety nets are impossible to address via a minimum wage. You could make the minimum wage $30/hr and some people will still become bankrupt by our ridiculous healthcare system. Why not lobby for single-payer healthcare and a universal basic income like $1000/mo/adult and $500/mo/child? They didn't report it was six figures a month, but I work in the industry and know that is the minimum cost for this type of service.  Putting Auto credit freezes on everyone seems like a good idea but I imagine the lenders would go up in arms if that happens because it would hault all new consumer debt. I use MoneyStrands.com to manage my spending. It's a lot like Mint, but provides support for more banks, and works with most Canadian financial institutions. I can't really compare them fairly though, since I didn't bother with Mint after learning that they don't care about Canadians. If your bank isn't supported by MoneyStrands, or you don't want to trust an online webiste with your account login, you can create accounts for manually uploaded files. It just means you have to log into your bank yourself, download the transactions as QFX, OFX, CSV or other supported formats, and then upload the files to the appropriate account in MoneyStrands. I love the expense tracking and reporting that MoneyStrands offers, but like Mint, their budgeting feature is seriously lacking. Fortunately I don't need to budget month-to-month, I just use it to see how much I spend on various categories, to help create annual budgets and decide how much I can invest or use for a vacation.