Every price, every quotation and every form name below was checked on September 27, 2026, against Intuit's own product pages and one court opinion. The sources are listed at the end.
The Self-Employed Tier Is Gone
The first thing to know is that the product you searched for does not exist as a product anymore. The pages checked for this review price five of them: Free Edition, Do It Yourself Deluxe, Do It Yourself Premium, Expert Assist Basic and Expert Assist Premium. The Deluxe page also names a third expert product, Expert Assist Deluxe, and this review did not open its price. There is no Self-Employed in that list.
The job moved rather than disappeared. Intuit's own Premium page carries the title "TurboTax Do It Yourself Premium 2025-2026 | Self-Employed & Investor Tax Software," which is the company telling you where freelancers are supposed to land. The old self-employed page returns a 404.
So the useful question is not "did the Self-Employed tier get worse." It is "which tier does a Schedule C filer actually buy," and that turns out to be a more interesting question than the marketing suggests.
The Ladder, Priced
Five federal prices, all read from the product pages on September 27, 2026. Every one of them carries the same two notes: a promotion that reads "File by 3/31 to save," and "State additional."
| Product | Federal price | Who it is for | What it will not do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Edition | $0 | Simple 1040 returns | No schedules except EITC, child tax credit, student loan interest and Schedule 1-A. Around 37% of filers qualify, in Intuit's own words |
| Do It Yourself Deluxe | $79 | Itemized deductions, interest and dividends | Schedule C expenses, which is where the upgrade fires |
| Do It Yourself Premium | $139 | Self-employed and investors | Nothing a simple Schedule C needs. This is the tier the old Self-Employed product became |
| Expert Assist Basic | $59 | Simple returns plus on-demand advice | Schedule C. Its page says simple Form 1040 returns only, with the same schedule exceptions as Free Edition |
| Expert Assist Deluxe | Not checked | Named on the Deluxe page beside Expert Assist Basic and Expert Assist Premium | No price and no form list read for this review |
| Expert Assist Premium | $209 | Schedule C with a final review by an expert | The highest federal price among the tiers this review opened |
Two things stand out from that table. The first is that the free tier prints its own limit honestly now: "$0 Federal + $0 State + $0 To File" alongside "around 37% of filers qualify. Simple Form 1040 returns only." The second is that the tier ladder is not a continuum of quality. Expert Assist Basic costs $59, which is less than the $139 Premium, because advice is not the expensive part. Forms are.
The Word "Income Only"
Here is the detail the old version of this page got wrong, and the one worth the time. Intuit publishes a full form-by-form comparison across Free, Deluxe and Premium. The row for the form that self-employed filers need reads, verbatim:
"Schedule C* Profit or Loss from Business (Income only)", then "Included in Deluxe" and "Included in Premium". That row does not carry the words "Not included in Free Edition". Those words sit on other rows of the same table. Free Edition's own page is the one that limits itself to simple Form 1040 returns.
Read plainly, Schedule C is in Deluxe. Read carefully, the parenthetical is doing the work: income only. A Schedule C is a profit and loss statement for a business, which means the expenses side is not decoration, it is how the number gets to profit. Premium's own page is where the expense help is advertised: home office calculations, and mileage and vehicle deductions. Form 8995, the qualified business income deduction, is listed as included in Deluxe as well as Premium, so that form is not the reason to leave the $79 tier.
So the practical price of a self-employed return with expenses is $139, not the $79 the comparison table's Deluxe column first suggests. That is not a scandal on its own. Tax software pricing by form is a defensible model. But it means the funnel works like this: the free tier cannot start a Schedule C, the middle tier can start the income and cannot finish the expenses, and the tier that completes the job costs $60 more.
The Settlement, and What a Court Just Undid
This page used to describe a $141 million settlement as a permanent restraint on Intuit's marketing. Half of that is now wrong, and the correction is recent enough that most reviews have not caught it.
The settlement. In 2022, as the Wisconsin attorney general's office described it in a 2024 filing, "a coalition of 50 States and the District of Columbia secured $141 million from Intuit" to resolve state investigations into its free-filing claims. That settlement stands.
The order. Separate from the states, the FTC brought its own case, and an administrative law judge ruled that Intuit had deceived consumers with "free" advertising. The Commission affirmed and imposed a cease-and-desist order built around a simple rule: do not call something free unless it is free for everyone, or disclose who actually qualifies.
The reversal. On March 20, 2026, the Fifth Circuit granted Intuit's petition and vacated that order. The holding is procedural rather than factual: deciding a deceptive advertising claim before an administrative law judge, the court said, violates the separation of powers, following the Supreme Court's decision in SEC v. Jarkesy. The case was remanded for further proceedings, which means the FTC has to make its case again in a different forum. Meanwhile the court's own description of the underlying facts is blunt enough to keep: "Most American taxpayers do not have 'simple tax returns.'"
What that means for a filer filling out a return this season is smaller than it sounds. The order is gone, but the disclosure habit is not, because the state settlement and the practical risk of advertising the same way twice both survived. Today's Free Edition page says "around 37% of filers qualify" right next to the price, which is the kind of sentence the old advertising was built to avoid.
What the Same Job Costs Elsewhere
The alternatives are not hypothetical and their prices are printed, so run one return through three of them.
- FreeTaxUSA: $0 for a federal return and $15.99 per state return. Their pricing page lists small-business and 1099 income among the included features rather than as upgrades.
- Cash App Taxes: "No matter your tax situation, you can file your federal and state taxes for free," which is the strongest claim on this list because it does not come with a qualification table.
- IRS Free File: guided tax software at no cost for filers whose adjusted gross income is $89,000 or less, per the IRS page that describes the program.
Put numbers on it for one freelancer with a Schedule C and one state return. TurboTax Premium is $139 federal plus a state charge the product pages never print. FreeTaxUSA is $15.99, and its pricing page lists small-business and 1099 income as included rather than as upgrades. Cash App Taxes is $0 on the sentence quoted above, and that sentence does not name Schedule C.
Where TurboTax earns its price is elsewhere: multi-state returns, rental property next to self-employment, a business that needs depreciation handled carefully, or a year messy enough that you want the final review that Expert Assist Premium sells. The honest version of this section is not "use the free one." It is "the free one is genuinely enough until your return stops being simple, and Intuit's own free tier tells you where that line is."
Who Should Skip It
Skip it if your return is one Schedule C and one state. You are paying $139 plus an unprinted state charge for forms that two other products file for $15.99 or nothing.
Skip Deluxe specifically if you have expenses. Deluxe's Schedule C is income only. Starting there because it is $60 cheaper ends with the same upgrade, later, with your data already entered.
Skip Expert Assist Basic for a business return. At $59 it is the cheapest way to get a person on the phone, and it cannot file your Schedule C. Advice without the right forms is the most annoying way to spend $59.
Skip Audit Defense if what you actually want is a second opinion. The paid tiers already include audit guidance, which is step-by-step help if a letter arrives. Representation is the extra, and at that point the honest comparison is a CPA who knows your business.
Skip the loyalty question entirely. Software that filed your return last year has no claim on this year's return. The forms are the same forms at every vendor, and the one you already know how to use is worth less than the one that prints its prices.
How This Score Works
The criteria below were written before this product was scored, and they are the same five on every review here. Each one takes only inputs you can check yourself on a vendor page: what a plan includes, where it caps you, what processing costs, what is sold separately, and what is printed versus quoted. Nothing in the score depends on how the software feels to use, because that is not something this page can evidence.
| Criterion | 2 points | 1 point | 0 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the entry plan includes | The cheapest paid plan does the product’s core job without an upgrade, and nothing a solo user needs monthly sits a tier up | Core job works, but at least one routine monthly need is only on a higher tier | The cheapest paid plan cannot do the core job without an upgrade or a paid add-on |
| Where the caps bite | No hard cap a one-person business would hit in a year | A cap exists but sits above ordinary solo use | A cap sits inside ordinary solo use |
| Cost of getting paid | Processing rates published, and a bank transfer path under 1.5% or capped | Rates published, but card only or the bank path is 1.5% or higher | Rates not published anywhere public |
| Add-on load | Nothing routine is sold separately; add-ons are genuinely optional | One routine need is priced as an add-on | Two or more routine needs are add-ons, or a required add-on costs half the plan again |
| Price transparency | Every plan price and the renewal price is printed, and promotions state what they renew at | Plan prices printed, but a material cost needs a call, a login or a quote | The entry price only exists as a promotion, or key prices are not public |
8 points available across the 4 criteria that apply to this product, halved for a score out of five. The one left out is named in the table above with the reason. A high score means the pricing is honest and the plan you buy is the plan you keep. It does not mean the product is the best one for you.
The Score
| Criterion | Score | Why, from the printed facts |
|---|---|---|
| What the entry plan includes | 0 / 2 | Free Edition cannot touch a Schedule C at all, and Intuit’s own form table lists Schedule C in Deluxe with the qualifier "(Income only)". Expenses sit outside that parenthetical, so the cheapest paid tier cannot finish that return. Premium, at $139, is the tier whose page advertises the expense help. |
| Where the caps bite | 2 / 2 | No return, client or transaction cap. The tiers differ by forms supported, not by how much you are allowed to file. |
| Cost of getting paid | n/a | Does not apply: The product does not process payments for the customer, so there is no rate to publish |
| Add-on load | 1 / 2 | One routine need is priced separately: the state return. Every product page prints "State additional" and no number, so a filer with a state income tax is buying federal plus an unprinted second charge. Audit Defense is genuinely optional. |
| Price transparency | 1 / 2 | Federal prices are printed on each product page. The state price is not printed anywhere on the product or comparison pages, only "State additional", and it appears once you run their pricing flow. Promotions state the deadline ("File by 3/31 to save") without stating the renewal price. |
| TurboTax | 4 / 8 | 2.5 out of 5 |
Four out of eight, or 2.5 out of 5, and the zero is the one that matters. TurboTax's own form table puts Schedule C in Deluxe with "income only" beside it, which means the cheapest paid tier cannot finish the job a self-employed filer came to do, and the tier that can is $139. The state return being unprinted is the second problem: every product page says "State additional" and no page says how much, which is the definition of a material cost you cannot check before you start.
What the score cannot capture is that TurboTax is good at the complicated version of this job. Multi-state returns, rental income beside a Schedule C, a final expert review before filing: those are real, and they are priced. The problem is not that Intuit charges a lot for hard returns. It is that a return with business expenses meets the $139 tier before it is finished.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is TurboTax Self-Employed still available?
No. The pages checked for this review price Free Edition, Do It Yourself Deluxe, Do It Yourself Premium, Expert Assist Basic and Expert Assist Premium. The Deluxe page also names Expert Assist Deluxe, and this review did not open that price. There is no Self-Employed product in that list. Premium absorbed the job: its own product page describes it as "Self-Employed & Investor Tax Software," and the old self-employed URL now returns a 404.
What does TurboTax cost for a self-employed filer in 2026?
Premium is $139 federal, with a promotion that says "File by 3/31 to save," and the state return is additional. Deluxe is $79 and Free Edition is $0, but neither can complete a Schedule C with expenses. Expert Assist Basic is $59 and Expert Assist Premium is $209.
Does TurboTax Deluxe include Schedule C?
Intuit’s own form table lists "Schedule C* Profit or Loss from Business (Income only)" as included in Deluxe and in Premium. That row does not carry the words "Not included in Free Edition"; those words appear on other rows. Free Edition’s own page limits itself to simple Form 1040 returns. The parenthetical is the part that matters for Deluxe: expenses sit outside it, and Premium is the tier that advertises the expense help.
Did the FTC order against Intuit survive?
No. On March 20, 2026 the Fifth Circuit vacated the order, holding that deciding a deceptive advertising claim before an administrative law judge violates the separation of powers, and remanded the case. The separate 2022 settlement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia, which produced $141 million, is untouched by that ruling.
Can I file a Schedule C for free?
Yes, and for most simple self-employment returns that is the honest answer. Cash App Taxes advertises free federal and state filing with no qualification test. FreeTaxUSA charges $0 for federal and $15.99 for a state return, including self-employment forms. IRS Free File offers guided software at no cost if your adjusted gross income is $89,000 or less.
Is TurboTax Audit Defense worth the extra fee?
It is separate from the free audit guidance every paid tier includes, which is step-by-step help if you get a letter. Audit Defense adds representation before the IRS and is sold separately at a price the product pages do not print. A one-time conversation with a CPA costs more and covers more, so the honest comparison is between Audit Defense and the preparer, not between Audit Defense and nothing.
Why does this page have no score for the payment criterion?
The scorecard asks what a product charges to get you paid. TurboTax does not process payments for your business, so there is no rate to publish and no way to answer it. The rule on this site is to mark a criterion not applicable before scoring rather than to invent a number for it, so this review is scored out of the four criteria that do apply.
Sources
Prices, tier names, form coverage and quoted wording were checked against these pages on September 27, 2026.
- TurboTax Do It Yourself Premium, for the $139 federal price, the "Self-Employed & Investor Tax Software" title, and the self-employment features
- TurboTax Do It Yourself Deluxe, for the $79 price and the form-by-form table including "Schedule C (Income only)"
- TurboTax Free Edition, for the $0 federal and state price, the around 37% qualification figure and the list of schedules it excludes
- TurboTax Expert Assist Basic and Expert Assist Premium, for the $59 and $209 federal prices
- TurboTax online comparison page, for "State additional" appearing without a state price on every product
- Fifth Circuit, Intuit v. FTC, No. 24-60040 (filed March 20, 2026), for the vacatur of the FTC order, the separation-of-powers holding and the line about simple tax returns
- Wisconsin Department of Justice, June 26, 2024, for the 2022 settlement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia and the $141 million figure
- FreeTaxUSA pricing, for the $0 federal and $15.99 state returns
- Cash App Taxes, for free federal and state filing with no qualification test
- IRS Free File, for the $89,000 adjusted gross income threshold on guided software
For the accounting side of the same year, see the accounting software roundup and the QuickBooks Self-Employed review. If the deduction list is what you came for, start at tax deductions for side hustles.
