How I Filed My Taxes as a Graduate Student in Indiana

Recently, I have been looking into how to file taxes in Indiana as a PhD student, since I received a fellowship stipend and scholarship, which makes things a little more complicated than a standard W-2 filing.

According to the Indiana Government website, there are four recommended free filing services: TaxSlayer, FreeTaxUSA, OLT, and 1040.com. All four also include free state tax returns if you qualify based on income. If none of these work for your situation, the IRS website also lists additional free filing options you can choose from.

I also talked with a few PhD students at Purdue. For domestic students, most recommend FreeTaxUSA, with some mentioning TaxAct as an alternative. H&R Block came up as a solid option for married students, and TurboTax was popular among friends from Florida, where there is no state income tax anyway.

For international students, the answer is different. You are required to use Glacier Tax, which Purdue and many other institutions provide access to.

I ended up going with FreeTaxUSA, partly because AI recommended it and partly because it was genuinely easy to navigate. The federal return is completely free, and if you access it through the Indiana Government website, the state return is free as well. Since most grad students are not exactly rolling in money, the fact that it is essentially free for most of us is a big plus.

Just make sure you file before the deadline. This year, it is April 15, 2026.

Screenshot of the Indiana free file website