Intuit brought Credit Karma Tax back on 20 October 2026 with free federal filing on every form and $15 a state. The free part is real and broader than TurboTax's. The rest — state fees, two optional add-ons, and an AI story where half the headline features are labelled coming soon — is where the honest reading starts.
Federal: yes, genuinely $0, on every form and every schedule, with no income cap. That is not a marketing claim dressed up as a tier — Schedule C, Schedule D, Form 8949, Schedule E, itemised deductions and the credits all sit inside the free federal return, and there is no paid tier to be funnelled into halfway through the interview. On that measure it beats TurboTax Free Edition, which is $0 federal but only for simple 1040 returns covering roughly 37% of taxpayers, despite being sold by the same company. State: $15 for each one. One state and your bill is $15 all in. Two states, because you moved or you worked across a border, is $30; three is $45. Two add-ons are real prices, not decorations: a $29 PLUS bundle (audit defence, ID protection, specialist support, and paying the state fee out of your refund) and a $39 Expert Final Review. Both are optional, both can come out of your refund, and a filer who ticks both plus one state pays $83. The AI is the part to slow down on. Expert chat is live. The Explanation Agent and Error Agent are labelled "coming soon" in Intuit's own release, with no date, so nobody should choose this product for them today. The guarantees are specific and worth having: $30 if a competitor gets you a bigger refund on an amended return, and Intuit pays IRS or state penalty and interest caused by its own calculation error. Two honest warnings. The free five-day-early refund requires a Credit Karma Money account — it is a banking upsell dressed as a speed feature. And this is the same company that sells TurboTax, which now makes more than half its revenue from live support, so the free DIY lane exists to protect the paid one. Verdict: the best value in US DIY filing for a one-state filer with anything more complicated than a W-2. Less obviously the best if you file in two states, want a human in the loop, or are outside the US, where it is simply not available.
Credit Karma Tax is Intuit's free-tier DIY tax product, relaunched on 20 October 2026 inside Credit Karma, and it is not the Credit Karma Tax you may remember. The name has history, and the history is the most useful thing in this review, because almost every confused article about the launch is confused about exactly this point.
The original Credit Karma Tax launched in 2017 and made its name by being free for both federal and state returns — a genuine anomaly in a market where state filing was the standard second invoice. When Intuit agreed to acquire Credit Karma in 2020, the US Department of Justice made divesting that tax business a condition of the deal. Intuit sold it to Square for $50 million in cash, and Square renamed it Cash App Taxes in 2021. That product still exists, still belongs to Block, and is still free for federal and state.
So the thing Intuit announced on 20 October 2026 is a new product wearing an old name. It runs on Intuit's own platform technology rather than the divested codebase — Intuit's consumer business EVP Mark Notarainni describes today's version as a rebuild rather than a revival — and Credit Karma's own marketing page is candid about the lineage in a way most relaunches are not: it says the product is powered by TurboTax. Read that twice. This is not a scrappy independent challenger to TurboTax. It is TurboTax's free lane, with a different price list and a different front door.
What you actually get is a self-guided interview in the Credit Karma website and app: import or photograph your documents, answer plain-English questions, run accuracy checks as you go, e-file federal and state, and then — this is the part Intuit is really selling — keep using the same account for Credit Karma's credit monitoring, spending insights and the agents described below.
The federal return is free for everyone, and "everyone" is doing real work in that sentence. Intuit's release says "$0 federal... no matter their tax complexity", and Credit Karma's tax pages back it with a specific list rather than a vague promise:
There is no income ceiling, no form whitelist and no complexity gate. For comparison, TurboTax Free Edition covers W-2 income and the standard deduction and is estimated to fit around 37% of taxpayers; the other 63% are pushed up a price ladder. Credit Karma Tax removes the ladder entirely and charges for the state return instead. That is a cleaner design, and it is worth saying plainly: on federal coverage, this is the most generous free offer in the category from a major vendor.
Intuit's press release leads with AI, so it is worth separating what shipped from what is on a slide. As of 21 October 2026:
Three more agents exist, and they are financial tools rather than tax tools. The Refund Agent turns a refund into a plan to pay down debt, save or invest. The Debt Agent builds a paydown plan that Intuit says saves members more than $200 a month. The Paycheck Agent allocates each paycheque across bills, spending and goals. All three act on your Credit Karma accounts and cash flow rather than on your return, all three are described as available rather than upcoming, and none of them will help you get a 1099 entered correctly. Judge them as reasons to use Credit Karma, not as reasons to trust its tax engine.
This is the entire price list. There is no tier ladder to climb and nothing to upgrade into partway through the interview, which is the structural difference between this product and the rest of the category.
| Item | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Federal return | $0 | Every form and schedule, any income level, any complexity. Requires a free Credit Karma account. |
| State return | $15 each | Charged per state. Multi-state filers pay per state; part-year residents typically file two. |
| PLUS Bundle (Expert Support Bundle) | $29 | Optional. One year of audit defence, ID protection benefits, 1:1 specialist support, and the ability to pay the state fee out of your refund. |
| Expert Final Review | $39 | Optional. A tax expert reviews your finished return before you file. Sold on top of the bundle, not instead of it. |
| Early refund into your own bank | Fee, ~$35 listed | Free only into a Credit Karma Money account. Confirm the current figure in the flow. |
Figures are Credit Karma's and Intuit's published prices as checked on 21 October 2026. Intuit states that add-on pricing is subject to change.
Filer A — single, one W-2, one 1099 side gig, one state. Federal $0 + state $15 = $15. No add-ons, no upsell accepted, and the return is complete: Schedule C and Schedule SE are inside the free federal return.
Filer B — same return, wants audit defence. $0 federal + $15 state + $29 PLUS Bundle = $44. This is the version most cautious filers will actually buy, and it is still roughly what TurboTax charges for a single state return on a paid tier.
Filer C — same return, wants audit defence and a human to check it. $0 + $15 + $29 + $39 = $83. At that point you are paying for a reviewed return at a price no other DIY product matches, and you are also two-thirds of the way to the cost of a modest professional preparation.
The multi-state maths is the one thing to do before you commit. If you moved during the year, live in one state and work in another, or run a small business across a border, you file a part-year or non-resident return for each state. At $15 each that is $30 or $45 — still cheap, and still the number that makes the "$15 flat rate" headline slightly less flat than it sounds. For a two-state filer the honest comparison is against Cash App Taxes at $0 and FreeTaxUSA at about $16 per state.
Yes — with four qualifiers that a fair review has to state plainly.
1. The state return is not free, and it is charged per state. One state is $15, which is a fair price and cheaper than TurboTax's roughly $59–64 or H&R Block's roughly $37. Two states is $30, three is $45. The "flat rate" is flat per state, not flat per filer, and movers are the people who notice.
2. The add-ons are a real second invoice, and they are positioned exactly where doubt lives. Audit defence at $29 and a professional review at $39 are optional and honestly labelled as such on Credit Karma's own page. But they arrive at the moment a filer is least confident and most willing to pay, which is a design choice, not an accident. Neither is necessary for a correct return, and the free version includes the accuracy guarantee whether or not you buy them.
3. "Free" requires an account, and the account is the product. Credit Karma's business is data and financial products: credit scores, card and loan offers, spending insights, and now banking. A tax return is the most complete financial document most people ever produce — income, dependants, mortgage interest, brokerage balances, business expenses. Filing here means that document lands inside the same profile that already holds your credit file.
4. The fastest refund is behind a banking product. Five days early, free, is real. It is also conditional on opening a Credit Karma Money account. Into your own bank the same speed is a paid extra. That is a $0-to-$35 nudge toward switching your deposit account, and it should be described as what it is rather than as a feature.
Every figure in this review is one of two things: something Credit Karma or Intuit publishes, or a figure reported by a named third party. This log says which, and dates the check, so you can judge how fresh the evidence is before you spend money.
| Check | Result on October 21, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Intuit press release, 20 October 2026 | Confirms $0 federal and $15-per-state filing "no matter their tax complexity", the $29 Expert Support Bundle and $39 Expert Final Review, the five-day early refund, the $4,000 refund advance at $0 fees and 0% APR for the tax year 2026 offering, and that the Explanation and Error Agents are coming soon. |
| Credit Karma tax page and launch FAQ | Confirms every federal form included at no charge, $15 per state, the $30 Max Refund Guarantee, the 100% Accuracy Guarantee covering penalty and interest from a calculation error, and that both add-ons are optional and payable from the refund. |
| Feature status, agent by agent | Expert chat, in-interview help and accuracy checks are described as available. Explanation Agent and Error Agent carry the words "coming soon" in Intuit's release and had no published date. |
| Competitor state fees | FreeTaxUSA state returns are $15.99 each for the 2026 season per its own pricing page; Cash App Taxes states $0 federal and $0 state; IRS Free File is limited to adjusted gross income of $89,000 or less for 2025 returns. |
| History of the name | Original Credit Karma Tax launched 2017; divested as a condition of Intuit's Credit Karma acquisition and sold to Square for $50 million cash; relaunched as Cash App Taxes in 2021. Today's product is a rebuild on Intuit platform technology. |
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Federal filing | $0 — all forms, all schedules, no income cap, no complexity gate |
| State filing | $15 per state return, e-filing included |
| PLUS Bundle | $29 — audit defence (1 year), ID protection, specialist support, pay state fee from refund |
| Expert Final Review | $39 — expert review before you file; adds to the bundle |
| Early refund | Up to 5 days, free into Credit Karma Money; fee into your own bank |
| Refund advance | Up to $4,000, $0 loan fees, 0% APR — tax year 2026 offering |
| Availability | United States only; SSN or ITIN and a free Credit Karma account required |
What we did not test: we did not file a test return. Every figure below is from Credit Karma's and Intuit's own pages, checked 21 October 2026, plus named third-party reporting of the 20 October launch. Nothing here is a hands-on measurement of the interview, the chat response times or the accuracy checks, and anything we could not confirm is labelled as an estimate.
Best for: filers who want a human in the loop and will pay for it
Best for: absolutely free filing, federal and state
Best for: the same coverage as Credit Karma Tax, for a similar price, without the account
Best for: anyone under the income limit who wants to pay nothing at all
Best for: paid filers who want audit support included rather than added
| Product | Federal | State | Free forms limit | AI help | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Credit Karma Tax | $0 | $15 each | None — all forms and schedules | Expert chat live; Explanation and Error Agents coming soon | One-state filers with a 1099, shares or a rental who want $0 federal |
| TurboTax | $0 Free Edition; ~$69–129 paid | $0 on Free Edition; ~$59–64 otherwise | Simple 1040 only on Free Edition (~37% of filers) | Intuit AI plus Live Assisted and Live Full Service with CPAs and EAs | Complex returns where a human should be accountable |
| Cash App Taxes | $0 | $0 | No income cap; check excluded forms on its site | None of note | Multi-state filers who want to pay nothing at all |
| FreeTaxUSA | $0 | ~$15.99 each | None — all forms including Schedule C and D | No agents; paid support upgrades | Filers who want no account, no data tie-in, no upsell |
| IRS Free File | $0 | $0 in most partner products | AGI $89,000 or less (2025 returns) | Varies by partner | Anyone under the income ceiling |
| H&R Block | Free for simple; ~$65 Deluxe | ~$37 | Narrow free tier; paid tiers cover all forms | AI help plus in-person offices | Paid filers who want audit support included and a desk to visit |
State fees for Cash App Taxes and H&R Block move with the season and with promotions; check the official site before you file. IRS Free File eligibility is set annually by the IRS.
Choose Credit Karma Tax if you are a US filer with one state return and anything more than a plain W-2: a 1099 side gig, a brokerage account, crypto, a rental, itemised deductions. You will pay $15 and nothing else, you will not be moved to a paid tier halfway through, and the accuracy guarantee and $30 max-refund promise come with the free product rather than the paid one. Add the $29 bundle if audit anxiety is real for you; skip the $39 review unless your return has something in it you do not fully understand.
Choose TurboTax instead if your situation is genuinely complex — a partnership K-1, a business with inventory and depreciation, a year with a sale of a business, a residency question you cannot answer confidently — and you want a CPA or Enrolled Agent accountable for the result. The premium is roughly $150–250 more, and for that kind of return it is not irrational. Our TurboTax review breaks down which tier you actually need.
Choose Cash App Taxes if you file in two states. At $0 federal and $0 state it wins the arithmetic outright, and the difference between $0 and $30 is the whole argument. Check its excluded-forms list first: a shorter supported list is the price of free.
Choose FreeTaxUSA if you want the same coverage without a Credit Karma profile. At $15.99 a state it is within a dollar of Credit Karma Tax and asks nothing of your data beyond the return itself. For a filer who finds the idea of a combined credit-and-tax profile uncomfortable, that dollar buys something real.
Check IRS Free File first if your adjusted gross income is $89,000 or less. It is free federal and, in most partner products, free state. Ten minutes of eligibility checking beats any review, including this one.
Because the alternative is losing the customer entirely. Intuit now sells two DIY tax products at wildly different prices, and the reason is not confusion — it is segmentation.
TurboTax's economics have moved. More than half its revenue now comes from live support: Live Assisted, where a person reviews alongside you, and Live Full Service, where a professional prepares the return. That is a better business than selling a $69 download, and it is a worse business for the roughly 37% of taxpayers whose return is simple enough that nobody needs to talk to anyone. Those filers are price-sensitive, they comparison-shop in January, and every year a share of them leave for FreeTaxUSA or Cash App Taxes and never come back.
Credit Karma Tax is the answer to that churn: keep the price-sensitive filer inside Intuit, at $0 federal plus a $15 state fee, and make the money back on the add-ons, the banking relationship and the data. It costs Intuit far less to serve a return through a self-guided interview on its own engine than to staff a CPA on it, so a $0 federal return that retains a customer is worth more than a lost customer.
That logic explains the shape of the offer precisely, and it is why the review should be read with it in mind:
None of that is sinister. It is a well-run company defending a franchise. But it does mean two things for you as a buyer. First, the free tier's limits will be set by what TurboTax needs to protect, not by what a free product could theoretically afford, so expect the state fee to stay and possibly rise. Second, when Intuit says a feature is coming soon, it is telling you it is on a roadmap for a product it needs to succeed — which is a real signal, and still not the same as a feature you can use today.
Credit Karma already knows a great deal about you before you file. That is the point of it: a credit file, account balances, income signals, spending patterns, and a running estimate of your financial life. A tax return adds the piece it was missing — verified income, dependants, mortgage interest, brokerage positions, business profit and loss. Together they are close to a complete financial picture of one person, held by one company, and used to decide which cards, loans and banking products to offer you.
Credit Karma's tax product is free because the return improves that picture. That does not make it a scam and it does not make the offer dishonest — the price is stated as $0 and it is $0. It does mean the trade is data rather than dollars, and you should decide whether you are comfortable with that trade before you start rather than at the end.
One more contextual fact worth knowing when you weigh the free offer: Intuit withdrew from the IRS Free File consortium in 2021, as reported at the time, which is why a $0 federal return arriving five years later is worth reading carefully rather than taking at face value. The product is real. The strategy behind it is also real, and understanding both is what this review is for.
The federal return is genuinely free, for everyone, with no income cap and no restriction on forms: W-2 income, Schedule C self-employment, Schedule D and Form 8949 for shares and crypto, Schedule E rentals, itemised deductions and the credits that go with them, all at 0 dollars. What is not free is the state return, which costs 15 dollars for each state you file, and two optional add-ons, a 29 dollar PLUS bundle with audit defence, ID protection and specialist support, and a 39 dollar Expert Final Review. A single filer with one state pays 15 dollars, and that is the whole bill. Nothing forces you into a paid tier partway through the interview the way TurboTax Free Edition does, because there is no paid tier to be moved into. You do need a free Credit Karma account to start, and the fastest refund route, up to five days early at no charge, requires a Credit Karma Money account rather than your own bank.
No, and this is the single most confusing thing about the product. The original Credit Karma Tax launched in 2017 and was free for both federal and state returns. When Intuit agreed to buy Credit Karma in 2020, the US Department of Justice required it to divest that tax business, and Intuit sold it to Square for 50 million dollars in cash. Square renamed it Cash App Taxes in 2021, and it is still a separate product that is still free for federal and state filing. The Credit Karma Tax relaunched by Intuit on 20 October 2026 is a new build running on Intuit's own platform technology, described by Intuit consumer business EVP Mark Notarainni as a ground-up rebuild rather than a revival of the old code. So the two share a name and nothing else: Cash App Taxes is free on state, this one charges 15 dollars a state, and Cash App Taxes belongs to Block while this one belongs to Intuit.
Yes, and this is the part that separates it from most free tiers. Credit Karma's own tax pages list Schedule C for self-employed income, Schedule SE for self-employment tax, Schedule D for capital gains, Form 8949 for stock and crypto sales, Schedule E for rental income, Schedule A for itemised deductions, and Schedule 1 and the other additional income forms, all inside the free federal return. There is no complexity cliff where a 1099 side gig or a brokerage account flips you into a paid tier, because there is no paid tier. What you give up against a premium product is hand-holding rather than coverage: this is a self-guided interview with AI help and chat support, not a CPA walking your Schedule C with you. Filers with a genuinely unusual situation, multi-state part-year residency, K-1 partnerships, or a business with inventory and depreciation, should still consider a professional, and the 39 dollar Expert Final Review exists precisely because Intuit expects some filers to want a second pair of eyes.
The 29 dollar PLUS bundle, called the Expert Support Bundle in Intuit's release, adds one year of audit defence, identity protection benefits, one-to-one live product support from specialists, and the ability to pay the 15 dollar state fee out of your tax refund rather than by card. The 39 dollar Expert Final Review adds a review of your finished return by a tax expert before you file, and Intuit describes it as an option added on top of the bundle rather than a replacement for it. Both are strictly optional: Credit Karma states plainly that you can file your federal return for 0 dollars without selecting either, that the add-ons are peace-of-mind services, and that both can be paid from your refund. Read the feature comparison on Credit Karma's own page rather than the summary here, because the bundle's contents changed between the pre-launch page and the launch release, and Intuit says pricing is subject to change.
No. The AI helps you fill it in, and you file it. Three things are described as live: an expert chat function that answers questions while you work, real-time help inside the interview, and a set of accuracy checks that run across the return as you go. Two things headlined in Intuit's 20 October release are explicitly labelled coming soon: the Explanation Agent, which is meant to explain why your refund or balance due came out the way it did, and the Error Agent, which is meant to catch mistakes before filing. They were not usable on 21 October 2026 and no date has been published. The other three agents Intuit mentions, the Refund Agent that turns a refund into a plan to pay down debt, save or invest, the Debt Agent that builds a paydown plan Intuit says saves members more than 200 dollars a month, and the Paycheck Agent that splits a paycheque across bills and goals, are Credit Karma financial tools rather than tax-filing features, and they act on your accounts rather than on your return.
No. Credit Karma Tax prepares and e-files United States federal and state individual income tax returns, and it requires a US Social Security number or ITIN, a US address and the documents the IRS expects, so it is not usable by readers in Hong Kong, the UK, Canada, Australia or anywhere else with its own income tax system. If you are in Hong Kong and looking at your own salaries tax, this product has nothing for you; our own HK salary tax calculator is the relevant tool. A US citizen or green card holder living abroad can generally use it for a US return, but state residency rules and foreign income reporting, including the foreign earned income exclusion and FBAR questions, are exactly the kind of situation where the self-guided interview and the 39 dollar review stop being enough.
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