Sen. Elizabeth Warren has long been a vocal opponent of privatizing the tax filing system—i.e., how things are now. When ProPublica completed an investigation in 2019 showing major tax giants like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block intentionally deterred people from accessing free filing from its sites, she and other senators called for the private tax preparers to issue refunds to taxpayers they tricked into paying for the otherwise free filing they were eligible for.
Warren grilled H&R Block and Intuit on their lobbying efforts when the two left the Free File Alliance in 2020 and 2021, respectively. She grilled them again in 2023 and in 2024 on their lobbying efforts and on their alleged loose data collection methods. She did so again in 2025 when their successful lobbying led to the death knell of the IRS’s Direct File service, and as early as this morning, on social media, ahead of her introduction of the Direct File Act.
