The Internal Revenue Service is moving ahead with a plan to build its own free tax filing program, known as Direct File, announcing Tuesday that a pilot version will be available to some taxpayers in 13 states next year.

Armed with an influx of new money approved by Democrats last year, the IRS is conducting a major overhaul of its operations – despite continued threats from Republicans to cut future funding and even abolish the agency altogether.

Eventually, the IRS tax filing system could serve as an alternative to private tax preparation companies like H&R Block and Intuit’s TurboTax.

  • david@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    This is great, but republicans are gonna hate it. They want everyone to hate taxes with a passion, so they make it difficult, time consuming and expensive to pay your taxes, and make government services as bad as possible so even poorer people who don’t pay much tax feel they get a bad deal out of taxation.

    If ordinary people found it easy and convenient to pay taxes they might notice that they get more out of government than they put in and that rich people are bearing more of the cost than they are. If they thought that, they might support tax increases or things that horrify republicans like medicaid for all.

    • GlendatheGayWitch@lib.lgbt
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      1 year ago

      Free software like TaxHawk and FreetaxUSA popped up once TurboTax and HR Block started charging people. I get your point, but it doesn’t carry as much weight with the fre, easy software that’s out there.

    • mob@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      That second paragraph doesn’t make sense to me. You are saying that “ordinary people” will notice that they benefit from the cost/return ratio compared to “rich people”, so they’ll get greedier?

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for medicaid for all… but I don’t follow that logic at all

      • david@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        They’ll notice that they benefit from taxation so they’ll be happier with a higher tax economy and see that tax cuts hurt them more than help them.