All the new funding that congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden showered on the IRS has the tax agency thinking big. That should worry taxpayers.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that IRS officials hope to get into the tax preparation business, in direct competition with TurboTax and firms such as H&R Block. The goal is to create a “Direct File” system on the agency’s website that would be free to those who use it.
“This is a service that I think the government ought to provide,” Kitty Richards, a progressive tax expert and former Treasury official, told the Journal. “It’s problematic that we instead provide it through these private corporations that prey on people and extract profits from taxpayers that are just fulfilling that civic duty.”
