Who owns FreeTaxUSA? Ownership structure explained (2026)

FreeTaxUSA is the tax app people recommend to each other when they get tired of paying TurboTax upgrade fees. Its pitch is simple: federal returns are free at every income level and every level of complexity, and state returns cost a flat fee. That pitch has made it one of the largest online tax filers in the country, yet very few of its users could name the company behind it.

The answer is TaxHawk, Inc., a private software company in Provo, Utah. Unlike its biggest rivals, TaxHawk has no stock ticker, no venture backers on record, and no private equity owner. That makes FreeTaxUSA an unusual case in a market dominated by public companies and investor-backed challengers, and it explains a lot about how the product is priced and run.

This article covers who owns FreeTaxUSA, what is and is not known about its shareholders, who runs the company today, and why its ownership matters for the people who file with it.

TaxHawk, Inc. was founded in 2001 by Dane Kimber and Scott Rasmussen. The two met at American Fork High School in Utah and both went on to Brigham Young University. Kimber became a computer engineer. Rasmussen became an accountant at a large firm in Portland, Oregon. In 2001, Rasmussen proposed building online tax software that would make filing easier and cheaper for ordinary Americans, and the pair built it on nights and weekends from Kimber's living room while keeping their day jobs. The company's own account describes the origin as a CPA and a software developer at a kitchen table.

TaxHawk launched in January 2002. The company runs its flagship brand, FreeTaxUSA, alongside the older TaxHawk.com site, and it is an authorized IRS e-file provider with what it calls a 100% US-based workforce. Headquarters is in Provo. In late 2025 the team moved into a new 70,000-square-foot building at 1255 South State Street, which the company formally announced on September 1, 2026.

The business model is the product. FreeTaxUSA charges nothing for a federal return, whether the filer has a W-2, a rental property, or a sole proprietorship. It makes money on everything around that free return: state returns cost $15.99 each, Deluxe support costs $7.99, Pro Support with access to tax professionals costs $44.99, and Audit Defense costs $19.99. There are no tiered federal packages to upgrade through, which is the direct opposite of the tiered model that TurboTax and H&R Block use.

TaxHawk does not publish revenue, profit, or a valuation. The figures it does share are volume figures: more than 82 million free returns filed with the IRS since launch, and a claim to be the second-largest filer of do-it-yourself returns. That ranking is the company's own and has not been confirmed by an independent source in current reporting.

FreeTaxUSA is not a separate company. It is a brand owned and operated by TaxHawk, Inc., a Utah corporation. A 2015 TaxHawk news release hosted on the IRS website describes the company as "the owner and operator of FreeTaxUSA.com." Utah business records, as compiled by a state-registry aggregator, list TAXHAWK, INC as an active corporation formed in July 2004, with Dane Kimber as registered agent. The company was operating from 2001, so the 2004 date most likely reflects a later incorporation or re-registration rather than the founding.

TaxHawk has no parent company that has been disclosed. It is not a subsidiary of a larger tax, software, or financial group, and it has not been acquired.

This is where the record goes quiet. TaxHawk has never published a cap table, and as a private company it has no obligation to. There are no SEC filings, no disclosed option grants, and no reporting on how equity is split among the founders, executives, or employees.

What can be said with confidence is limited. The two co-founders built the company without any recorded outside capital, and the company's own history presents it as a founder-built business with kitchen-table beginnings. Kimber remains listed as the corporation's registered agent in state records and is still publicly described as co-founder. Beyond that, how much of TaxHawk each founder holds today, and whether any stake has passed to executives, employees, or family trusts, is not publicly known.

No outside funding round has been disclosed for TaxHawk or FreeTaxUSA.

The absence of a round is itself informative. Mountain America Credit Union, which has banked TaxHawk since 2006, published a profile in 2026 in which Kimber described the company "collecting all this revenue" and looking for better returns on its cash. That is the language of a self-funded, cash-generating business rather than a venture-backed one.

There are no known institutional investors in TaxHawk. No venture capital firm, private equity sponsor, or strategic investor has announced a stake, and none appears in the reporting reviewed for this article. Mountain America Credit Union is a banking partner, not an owner. Anyone citing a specific shareholder or valuation for FreeTaxUSA is working from an estimate, not a disclosure.

There are no public signals. TaxHawk has not announced any plan to go public, and no reporting points to one. Its recent investment went into a permanent headquarters, which the company described as a long-term home. A public listing would force it to disclose revenue and margins that it has kept private for 25 years, and nothing in its public statements points in that direction.

Kim Oberg is President and CEO of TaxHawk, as confirmed in the company's September 2026 headquarters announcement. Public professional profiles list a software engineering background, including engineering work at TaxHawk. The date Oberg became CEO has not been disclosed.

Scott Rasmussen is a co-founder and was CEO as of 2015, when TaxHawk joined the IRS Security Summit coalition against identity-theft refund fraud. His current role is not publicly confirmed. He should not be confused with the political pollster of the same name.

Dane Kimber is a co-founder and the computer engineer of the founding pair. State records list him as the corporation's registered agent, and business data aggregators list him as a director. His exact current title is not confirmed by a company source.

TaxHawk does not publish a board of directors. Given the absence of outside investors, it is reasonable to infer that control sits with the founders and senior management, but that is an inference rather than a disclosed fact.

The best independent data on FreeTaxUSA's size comes from an antitrust case it was not a party to. When the Justice Department sued to block H&R Block's acquisition of TaxACT, Judge Beryl Howell's 2011 opinion laid out the market. Intuit held 62.2% of digital do-it-yourself returns in the 2010 season, H&R Block 15.6%, and TaxACT 12.8%. TaxHawk, "also known as FreeTaxUSA," came next at 3.2%, ahead of TaxSlayer at 2.7%. The court blocked the deal, and the parties abandoned it in November 2011. The ruling kept TaxACT independent, though it has since changed hands twice, and preserved room for smaller players such as FreeTaxUSA to grow. TaxHawk now claims second place in the same market, a sign of how much share it has gained since then, although no regulator has published an updated figure.

FreeTaxUSA's business sits inside federal tax policy. It is one of eight partners in the IRS Free File program for the 2026 season. Under its Free File offer, taxpayers with adjusted gross income of $51,000 or less, or $89,000 or less for active military, get a free federal and a free state return. The larger shift came in November 2025, when the administration cancelled the IRS Direct File program, the government's own free filing tool. That removed a public competitor to free commercial software just as FreeTaxUSA was marketing itself as the free option. The policy could reverse under a future administration, which makes it a risk worth tracking in any risk register template for the sector.

The word "free" has a legal history in this industry. In March 2022 the Federal Trade Commission sued Intuit over TurboTax's "free" filing advertising, a case that shaped Intuit's ownership and regulatory story for years. FreeTaxUSA's model avoids the core complaint, because its federal return stays free regardless of complexity. The exposure it does carry is in its paid add-ons and state fees, which must be disclosed clearly to stay on the right side of the same rules.

In July 2023, a congressional report found that TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block had used the Meta Pixel on their filing sites, sending taxpayer data to the company behind Facebook. The report, and the class actions already filed against Meta over the same tracking, turned a spotlight on Meta's ownership and data practices as much as on the tax firms. FreeTaxUSA was not among the companies the report identified as Pixel users, and no enforcement action against TaxHawk over data sharing has been reported. Its site states that it never sells tax return information. Still, any online filer holds sensitive data on millions of people, and a single breach or tracking lapse would be the most serious threat to a brand built on trust.

Private, founder-built ownership is the reason FreeTaxUSA can hold its pricing where it does. A public company answers to quarterly earnings, and a private equity owner answers to an exit multiple. Both create pressure to raise prices or push customers into higher tiers. TaxHawk has neither. It can keep the federal return free and the state fee low for as long as the business covers its costs, because no outside shareholder is demanding more.

That contrast is clearest against its rivals. Intuit is a public company whose TurboTax tiers are built to move customers upward. The personal finance software Quicken, which Intuit sold in 2016, has passed through two private equity owners, a path traced in how Quicken changed hands. TaxHawk has stayed with the people who started it, which gives it a longer time horizon than most of its competitors. For anyone mapping this market with a competitive analysis template, ownership is as important a variable as price.

The trade-off is opacity. Customers, partners, and regulators cannot see TaxHawk's finances, its board, or its succession plan. There is no public valuation to check, so any estimate of what the company is worth rests on assumptions. Readers who want to model it would have to start from volume and pricing and use a tool such as a business valuation calculator, with the caveat that the inputs are guesses.

For users, the practical point is continuity. As long as TaxHawk stays independent, its model is unlikely to change abruptly. The events to watch are a sale to a strategic buyer or private equity firm, a leadership change at the founder level, or a shift in federal free-filing policy. Any of those could change the economics that make FreeTaxUSA free.

FreeTaxUSA is owned and operated by TaxHawk, Inc., a privately held corporation in Provo, Utah. TaxHawk was founded in 2001 by Dane Kimber and Scott Rasmussen. It has no disclosed parent company and no disclosed outside investors.

Kim Oberg is President and CEO of TaxHawk, the company behind FreeTaxUSA, according to the company's September 2026 announcement. Co-founder Scott Rasmussen was CEO as of 2015.

No. TaxHawk is a private company with no stock listing, and it has not announced plans for an IPO. You cannot buy shares in FreeTaxUSA on any exchange.

Dane Kimber, a computer engineer, and Scott Rasmussen, an accountant, founded TaxHawk in 2001. The two friends from American Fork, Utah, built the software from Kimber's living room and launched it in January 2002.

TaxHawk does not disclose its shareholders. With no recorded outside funding, the company appears to be owned by its founders and insiders, but the exact split has never been made public.

TaxHawk has not raised any disclosed outside funding and has never published a valuation or revenue figure. The company says it has filed more than 82 million free federal returns since launch, which is the main public indicator of its scale.