46% of IRS Free e-file Sites Receive Failing Grades
Tax Payers Need to Think Before Filing
In early February 2016, OTA commissioned an audit of the 13 IRS “approved” free file e-file tax sites for compliance against auditing methodology developed by the Online Trust Alliance. The audit evaluated the IRS Free File e-file services against both OTA’s 2016 Online Trust Audit methodology as well as the IRS’s security mandates with data analysis running from February 2 through February 18.
Note while there are hundreds of other e-file tax sites and providers, for the context of this research the term “e-file” refers only to the 13 free e-file sites listed on IRS.gov.
![](https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/freefileresults.png)
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