The Internal Revenue Service is making it easier for more people to file their taxes for free in 2020.
On Monday, the IRS made an addendum to its Free File program which is an agreement with a dozen tax preparation firms including H&R Block and TurboTax’s parent company Intuit.
The government program offers no-charge tax-prep software to people in the U.S. with incomes below $69,000, or about 70 percent of the nation’s population.
The IRS’s update to the agreement bars tax filing services from making it hard for users to find out if they qualify to file their taxes for free. It also includes an amendment that lets the IRS create its own competing digital filing system in the future.
Under the new reform, companies are “prohibited from engaging in any practice that would cause the member’s Free File landing Page to be excluded from an organic Internet search,” the IRS said.
ProPublica later reported that TurboTax fought for 20 years to keep Americans from filing their taxes for free.
Intuit said it welcomes the changes and has supported free tax filing “for decades.”
“Intuit strongly supports these changes to the Free File program and associated Free File offerings because they increase the focus on the taxpayer experience,” the company said in a blog post on Monday.