There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
You can submit online, but the actual filling out of forms is just PDF files that you work through as if they are paper.
There’s a huge market for price-gouging online tax services that walk you though filing taxes in a simple way. They’ve been lobbying against this kinda of government-run filing system for a long time.
And the most insulting part is that a lot of that stuff could be pre-filled because the IRS already has the information, but because of all the lobbying you have to fill it yourself. It’s literally pointless work that should have been eliminated ages ago thanks to technology.
Check out https://www.freetaxusa.com/
This is honestly insane. Australia has had online lodgement for I donno 15 years. Your employer salary/bonuses/tax withheld, private health insurance if you have it, welfare payments including unemployment, family tax benefits and child care rebates, Australian paid dividends including franking credits etc and probably more are all sent to the ATO and preloaded into your lodgement. If you have no deductible it honestly is as easy as logging in, enter your bank details(which wil be saved for next year) and click submit… even if you do have deductions it basically holds your hand working out each one and in some cases has built in calculators, like one example you put in how many km you drove a car and it fills out the deduction.
It even gives you a very accurate estimate on your refund or outstanding tax.
While that is true there are already a ton of free services available and have been for years. Don’t think I’ve paid to file federal or state in over 10 years. Granted this is if you have a pretty simple return, if you have a ton of deductions most services will charge you to file those forms.