The IRS built a free way to file your taxes. Then it got killed.

June 5, 2026

Let’s talk about taxes! Fun!

In 2024, the IRS built something useful. A free online tool called Direct File that let you file your federal taxes straight with the government. No fees. No upsells. You enter what you made, it does the math, you’re done. It’s gone now. As of this tax season, you can’t use it anymore.

In a lot of other countries, filing your taxes is free and takes a few minutes. The government already knows what you earned, because your employer told them. They could just send you the bill or the refund and let you check it.

We don’t do that here. And it’s not by accident. For more than twenty years, the companies that sell tax software – like Intuit, which owns TurboTax, and H&R Block – have spent a lot of money making sure we never get the simple version. The harder taxes are to file, the more you’ll pay them to help you. That’s their business.

Intuit spent 3.9 million dollars on lobbying last year alone, and nearly 54 million since 2004. H&R Block spent close to 50 million in that same time. And it goes further than lobbying. Years ago, when the government made these companies offer a free filing option, Intuit hid it. They added code to their website so the free version wouldn’t come up in a Google search, and people got sent to the paid product instead. They were caught and paid 141 million dollars to settle. They would rather pay 141 million dollars than let people file for free. JFC.

So when the IRS built Direct File, and it worked, and it was going to save people up to 23 billion dollars in fees over ten years, the tax software companies spent record amounts to get rid of it. Last November, they got what they wanted. The program was shut down. Intuit gave a million dollars to the inauguration fund.

It would be easy to make this only about Trump. His administration is the one that ended it. But this fight is older than him, and both parties have let it happen. It has been going on for more than twenty years. Democrats have controlled the White House and Congress during some of those years, and the simple, free system other countries have still never got built here. The tax software companies kept winning no matter who was in charge. When something this obvious and this popular loses for twenty years straight under both parties, the problem isn’t one party. It’s the system itself.

Now, neither I nor anyone else running for District 5 can bring Direct File. It would need to pass the House, the Senate, and the President. There is already a bill to make it permanent, and I would support it and work to pass it. But a bill only works if enough members of Congress are willing to go against the companies paying into their campaigns. That’s the hard part.

Because this was never really about taxes. It’s about whether the people we send to Washington work for us or for the company writing the checks. Intuit can’t vote. But it can spend 54 million dollars, and that gets more attention than a regular person ever will.

That’s why I keep saying we have to fix the structure first. This is my pillar one platform – and I have a real plan to get the big money out. I’m not saying it’s an easy plan – but we’ve gotta start somewhere.

But you can’t win these fights as long as the people you elect depend on that lobbying money to keep their seats.

If we fix that, free filing can come back and stay. If we don’t, the tax software companies will win the next twenty years too.

Next April, when you’re paying to do something the government could do for you for free, it’s worth remembering that it existed once. And who took it away.

Sources

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