FreeTaxUSA
👤 Dane Kimber & Scott Rasmussen (An engineer (Kimber) and an accountant (Rasmussen) built the IRS-compliant engine themselves, nights and weekends, no VC.)🌐 site
US law makes 150M+ people file yearly. FreeTaxUSA made federal free, then billed state and support.
Will it work? · our read
Cheap beats funded. The mandate guarantees demand, not a winner. FreeTaxUSA won on 20+ years of bootstrapped discipline, not a granted monopoly — and free-filing politics could still shift again.
01How the money moves
Law forces 150M+ to file every year
→
Give the federal return away, $0
→
Charge state $15.99 + Deluxe/Pro upsells
02The numbers
82M+Statedtax returns filed with IRS
the sentence on the page
so your information is protected as you enter and e-file your taxes. Secure submission We've filed over 82 million returns and meet or exceed IRS security requirements. Server security Our physical…
Massive scale, zero price, zero funding — no VC-backed rival matches this combo. Crunchbase
$35-100M/yr · private, third-party estimate
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 5 August 2026
FreeTaxUSA homepage — "We've filed over 82 million tax returns with the IRS."FreeTaxUSA — About — "In 2001, a CPA and a software developer sat at a kitchen table"; the page's own markup states FreeTaxUSA "is a member of the IRS Free File Alliance and is an authorized IRS e-file provider".MACU — TaxHawk founder story — Dane Kimber (computer engineer) and Scott Rasmussen (accountant), run out of Kimber's living room; TaxHawk launched January 2002.FreeTaxUSA — Pricing — federal $0 at any income, state $15.99, Deluxe $7.99, Pro Support $64.99.Crunchbase — TaxHawk — no funding round reported.Wikipedia — Free File Alliance — the public-private free-filing program; Intuit and H&R Block left it in 2020-2021.
Revenue is a third-party ESTIMATE ($35.7M from one aggregator, $50-100M from another). TaxHawk, Inc. is private and files no public accounts, so tagged Estimate and not independently confirmed — no first-party revenue figure exists. First-party facts used: 82M+ returns filed (company homepage, i.e. company-stated), $0 outside funding (Crunchbase/PitchBook show no rounds), and $0 federal / $15.99 state pricing (their own site). Honest on the 'regulation moat': filing is legally mandatory (genuine forced, recurring demand) and IRS e-file authorization plus a yearly-rebuilt compliant engine is a real build barrier — but the regulation grants NO exclusivity. They compete head-on with TurboTax and H&R Block and won on radical price + 20+ years of bootstrapped discipline, not a granted monopoly. Founder roles ([Kimber = computer engineer, Rasmussen = accountant]) per the MACU interview. Drama is modest: an execution/patience/pricing win, not one dramatic masterstroke. We never score you.