It seems like Turbotax has the option to do it for free (abbreviated tax return) but I end up using the 'Free Tax USA' which provides free Federal and State filing.
I made a mistake of using the Turbotax $60 service before Turbotax put out the 'Free abbreviated' option for people. Because my income is $0, the Federal tax return they calculated came out as $0 as well and this made a huge problem because apparently they don't provide E-filing option for $0 tax return files. Instead the instructions on Turbotax said "they" will mail the hard-copy to the Federal directly. But this was not the case, after finalizing my Federal tax return and paying $60, it instructed me to print out the pages and mail it "myself".
I also filed for the State tax return and paid $50, and I selected it to be E-filed. But after finalizing it and paying $50, it stated that it has to be mailed by myself. I got very confused, so I checked the State tax return copy and it stated that New York State law requires income tax return prepared suing software to be e-filed ad that it MUST be filed electronically. I'm against the idea of mailing hard-copies to the Federal & State because of the danger of it getting lost and the delays on the filing process. So I basically wasted total of $110 for nothing.
There are other websites (such as the one I used, Free Tax USA) are much better in my opinion. Free Tax USA has the filing steps/process similar to the Turbotax and I only had to put everything as '$0' for both Federal & State, except for the education/tuition expenses. They were able to E-file everything for me and I just received an email saying the files were accepted by both Federal & State.
I hope this information helps for your tax files. Good luck!
