Which is stupid, IMO.

There's no reason not to have the e-file stuff directly on the irs.gov website.

Instead, it's farmed out to 3rd party sites who try to trick people into buying add-on services. It's ridiculous, but I'm sure they lobby hard to keep it that way, so it's probably not changing anytime soon.

Again, one more instance of the unhealthy trend in giving for-profit, 3rd-party companies your sensitive personal info, that the US Govt should be handling and be responsible for directly in the first place, making identity-theft and such nefarious activities easier.

The really unhealthy trends are the treating of a government id number as sensitive and the general mislabeling of fraud as identity theft.

Why a $57,000 limit?

Supposedly if you are over that limit you are rich enough to pay for a commercial software. Apparently government does not want to take business completely from the likes of Intuit.

That's the limit the Free File Alliance has negotiated.

http://freefilealliance.org/

Shhh. I have over the limit and have used the service for several years. Surprisingly, their automated error checking doesn't check for this.