Maryland launches free online system for filing individual state income taxes
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The portal comes almost a year after the federal government ended Direct File, a program that offered 25 states free online tax-filing services.
The Maryland Office of the Comptroller is getting an early start to prepare for the 2026 tax season with the launch of an online portal that allows residents to file their state income taxes for free.
The new Maryland Tax Connect system launched Sept. 1 and marks the first systemwide modernization of the state’s tax infrastructure in three decades, state officials said in a June statement announcing the initiative.
With the new cloud-based portal, Maryland residents can electronically file tax returns, make payments and monitor their tax refund status. Users can also view transaction history, account balances and other tax-related notices 24/7. The state processes about 3.2 million individual tax returns annually, Maryland Comptroller Brooke Lierman told Route Fifty.
Lierman helped spearhead the project after the state’s previous tax system, which was implemented in 1993 on a COBOL-based mainframe, experienced a computer outage in March 2023. The system went down for a week “in the middle of tax season” and two months after Lierman was sworn into office, she said.
After the legacy system was repaired, it processed all tax returns that were halted during the outage within 48 hours. But “I saw the urgency of the situation and that we needed to move quickly,” Lierman said.
In 2024, for example, Maryland Tax Connect became available to business taxpayers for filing and paying business taxes, registering a business, applying for or renewing licenses and other tasks.
To expand it for individual use, the Office of the Comptroller closed the legacy system for nearly two weeks last month to transfer more than 4 billion tax records to the new portal. Before that, “hundreds of team members contributed to more than 2.6 million hours to develop, test and implement the new tax portal,” Lierman said, adding that staff training for the new portal began in May.
Lierman’s office is also hosting monthly webinars for residents to learn more about Maryland Tax Connect and how to use it properly.
“I am very focused on ensuring that government is responsive and effective and … works well for every resident,” she said. “No system is ever perfect, but I also want to ensure that every day we're getting better, and that our residents … understand that our team is doing our best to meet their needs and to meet them where they are.”
As an example, Lierman pointed to Maryland’s participation in Direct File, which was a free, online tax-filing service offered by the IRS between 2024 and 2025. The program allowed eligible residents to dually file their federal and state taxes online, reducing administrative burden and making tax filing simpler for agency staff and the public. The IRS in late 2025 alerted states that the program would not be available in 2026.
“Direct File promised and delivered on modernizing tax administration and reducing red tape, making the tax filing process more accessible and less intimidating for filers,” Lierman wrote in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, last April following early reports that the program would be ending. “ When asked how we could improve upon Direct File, one Maryland taxpayer shared that, in their opinion, ‘you cannot improve on perfection.’”
Despite the short-lived program, Maryland was able to take lessons learned from Direct File to help ensure the new portal was user-friendly and intuitive, Lierman said.
“In designing our system for individual filers, we took inspiration from Direct File's design approach: using a simple interview-based flow, prepopulating with known wage and income data and building a clean and accessible interface,” she explained in an email to Route Fifty.
“I certainly hope in coming years we’re able to … make the system even simpler, more intuitive and that it more closely resembles what Direct File was able to do and the ease with which people were able to complete their taxes,” Lierman told Route Fifty.