NPR This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Dariam Woods, and I'm here with NPR's economics

correspondent Scott Horsley.

Welcome back to the show, Scott.

It's been a while.

Yeah, and it's great to be back with you during this countdown to April 15th, tax deadline day in most of the country.

Last minute filers are scrambling to get their returns finished.

Tens of millions of early birds have already collected their refunds.

Which camp are you and Dair?

Have you done your taxes yet?

I am one of those early birds.

I got a federal tax bill, state refund that kind of balanced out but then of course

I had to pay the software so I wasn't really coming ahead.

Good for you though yeah we had a rainy weekend here in Washington not too long ago and I was able to get that out of the way.

And we've talked before in this program about how challenging and costly it can be to navigate

the tax system.

And this year, a small group of people are trying something new.

They're filing online returns directly with the IRS for free.

I like the sound of free.

Yes indeed.

So far though, this is just a small experiment.

The IRS is only offering its free direct file service in a dozen states and only to people with relatively simple

tax returns.

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