IRS Direct File team disbanded

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520

by elicash • 1 year ago

120 49 1 year ago

How does removing an easy tax filing solution improve government efficiency? It seems like a handout to private tax preparers.

I've scanned some of the DOGE stuff and the fact that I have seen pretty much no mention or discussion of the big budget items: social security, military, medicare, and medicaid does not make me optimistic that this is going to do anything about government spending...

toomuchtodo3• 1 year ago

"Taxes are bad. Anything that makes collecting taxes easier or better is bad."

DevX101• 1 year ago

How does removing an easy tax filing solution improve government efficiency?

It doesn't. This is a corporate takeover of key government functions. This is just one small part of the plan.

Phase 1, which we're in now is to blame everything on bad governance.

Phase 2 is to say: 'business' can fix it and auction off the US government. Schools, the Post Office, Social Security, elements of law enforcement, and much more.

Phase 3: Read Balaji's "The Network State". TLDR: It will be to give corporations state power, including but not limited to owning and passing laws on their land, and having their own enforcement police/military.

LargoLasskhyfv• 1 year ago

So what? Cyberpunk iz da PHUNQ!

bananapub• 1 year ago

How does removing an easy tax filing solution improve government efficiency? It seems like a handout to private tax preparers.

it doesn't, the purpose of DOGE isn't to "improve government efficiency", it's a random company being allowed to take over portions of the actual government.

also, killing Direct File is an explicit ask from the H&R Block etc and their lobbyists, since they'll lose business if filing taxes becomes easier. they also oppose any genuine attempt to make the tax system itself more sensible for the same reason.

red-iron-pine• 1 year ago

It seems like a handout to private tax preparers

the entire premise of the Trump administration is to hand out the fed'gov to large companies and the hyper-wealthy. is this really that much of a surprise?

midnitewarrior• 1 year ago

It's not about efficiency, or saving money for taxpayers. It's simply to make government cost less.

IRS Direct File saves a lot of people money, just not rich people.

If it costs rich people money, they don't want it, regardless of how much money it saves individuals.

rsynnott• 1 year ago

How does removing an easy tax filing solution improve government efficiency?

What makes you think any of this is anything to do with government efficiency.

It seems like a handout to private tax preparers.

Yes.

hnburnsy4• 1 year ago

How does removing an easy tax filing solution improve government efficiency?

It was not removed.

elicash5• 1 year ago

To be clear, no indication that the program itself has been cut. I tried to be specific in my title that the team was disbanded, not that it's been taken offline.

That said, it's clear from this tweet that Musk views this program as a bad one. So I'm definitely concerned a good effort will be lost.

hnburnsy4• 1 year ago

The 18F team who works for GSA, is not part of the IRS, and was not the only group that worked on the IRS Direct file program. USDS and Treasury also worked on it.

9283409232• 1 year ago

I have to imagine Intuit and HR Block paid millions to get this done. You have to be in a cult to in some way align a simple and free way of filing taxes with "far-left" wokeness.

jeffbee2• 1 year ago

The flagged/dead army is out here in full force, but we're watching Elon Musk, Garry Tan who owns this website, YC alumni/notorious sociopaths like Austen Allred, and associates dismantling the government and effectuating, promoting, calling for, cheering a revolution.

elicash5• 1 year ago

Wait is THAT why this got taken off the front page? Because it was on there for a couple minutes.

PaulHoule2• 1 year ago

Personally I am inclined to flag any link to X, but especially any link to an Elon Musk post.

I'd have no problem with the content if it was in the mainstream media or some kind of analysis on a blog.

My own taxes are crazy because my wife runs a riding academy, we have a rental house, etc.

My son was a candidate for the 1040EZ back in the day (he only had a W-2) but Direct File was an unmitigated disaster for him last year because he had trouble creating an account, probably because he'd never filed a tax return.

While we were on the phone trying to get support (we put it off too long) I was able to download the 1040 and the corresponding form from New York and we filled it out, hung up, and mailed it the next day.

dang2• 1 year ago

No, that was imaginary.

If you want to know what's going on with flags and these stories on HN, I've written quite a bit about it over the last couple days. There's a shorter version at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922234 and two longer ones at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 (including a later reply). If you (or anyone) read those and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

basementcat• 1 year ago

I think it is more complicated than that. I think many of them feel obligated to maintain their professional relationships and not threaten them by allowing too much "counter revolutionary" content to appear on this platform.

FeloniousHam• 1 year ago

I hope you have real empathy for the kooks on the Right with their own struggles with conspiracy explanations...

My conspiracy theory: the names you mentioned don't give a rat's ass what some anon posts on this "website"

jeffbee2• 1 year ago

Empathy for rank-and-file dupes, but no quarter for the elites. They must face severe consequences.

MontgomeryPi2• 1 year ago

Hopefully doesn't impact eFile/Free File Fillable Forms or it's back to paper returns to the IRS for me vs HR Block

johnneville2• 1 year ago

140,803 taxpayers used it in 2024.

"Of the $13.0 million spent on pilot development and implementation, $10.6 million is technology and product development costs and $2.4 million is operational costs (customer service, cloud computing, user authentication, etc.)"

"Nearly half of Direct File users reported paying for tax preparation last year, and the Treasury Department estimates that Direct File users saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees"

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107236

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5969.pdf

edit: this comment had a much different estimate earlier based on a less specific source

toomuchtodo3• 1 year ago

It should be expected that the government has a cost to provide for citizens to meet their tax obligations easily, efficiently, and without a private party involved or necessary.

https://bsky.app/profile/vermontgmg.bsky.social/post/3lhcg2b...

Not for nothing, but Direct File by the IRS was one of the best things the USG has done in years — it allowed millions of Americans to stop paying predatory fees to TurboTax. The literal only people who oppose it are TurboTax lobbyists.

orionsbelt• 1 year ago

I think Direct File is great, but where is the $200 assumption coming from? A lot of the people using direct file (which is quite basic) were probably using free filing solutions or ones much less than $200.

johnneville2• 1 year ago

thanks for the reply. the $200 is a rounding down from $220 for the average fee cost for a 1040 in 2021 according to the national society of accountants.

the second link in my earlier comment provides much more direct data, estimating $5.6 million in tax preparation fees saved compared to operation costs of $2.4 million. i've updated my original comment now to remove my personal estimate.

$220 source: https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/NSACCT/725010a8...

tommiegannert• 1 year ago

Hmm. $13M is three minutes of additional US money printing.

https://budget.house.gov/press-release/us-national-debt-surp...

watusername• 1 year ago

Not really familiar with costs at this scale, I'm interested to see HN's take on whether this is considered cheap or expensive compared to other federal projects (both contracted and in-house).

My naive view is that this was a genuinely useful effort being wasted and an operational cost of $2.4M _looks_ like a steal, but would appreciate better comparison from people more informed than me.

yencabulator• 1 year ago

And you have to remember it was only starting to ramp up. The cost per taxpayer would be expected to go down as the program moved from development & scale-up to being the standard solution.

christophilus2• 1 year ago

Unlike most here, I've been cautiously optimistic about DOGE. I know, I know... But this seems like an absolute mistake, unless the administration really is planning on eliminating the income tax altogether. Filing income taxes in the US is such an enormous waste of time every year, and direct file seemed like we were finally moving in a better direction... sigh

elicash5• 1 year ago

What's weird is that there was initial support for the program by DOGE (or at least a similar program) that was expressed shortly after the election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/19/taxes-irs...

And so having him promote such a negative tweet about the effort just seems out of nowhere.

mcphage2• 1 year ago

Unlike most here, I've been cautiously optimistic about DOGE. I know, I know... But this seems like an absolute mistake

Well, now you know why most here are not cautiously optimistic about DOGE. Welcome to the club.

dhdjruf• 1 year ago

The I will write spurious comments without fully understanding the situation club?

How many people here think they could write a direct tax filing program that doesn't cost 10+ million dollars?

What I would like from the comment sectection is how would you implement this system more effectively not a bunch of NPC elon bad comments.

What's the purpose of these whining comments? When will chatgpt replace these people or has that already occurred?

christophilus2• 1 year ago

Time will tell. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of DOGE, and I was well aware of those reasons prior to this action. I think most people agree that fat needs to be trimmed; we disagree about how the trimming should happen. All the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth seemed (and still seems) to me to be overblown, but we will see.

nobodyandproud2• 1 year ago

I was (and still am) pretty centrist in my views, but this administration and the complicit Legislators and Supremes stepped over a line that I never expected to see in my lifetime.

hnburnsy4• 1 year ago

The program was not removed, you can un-sigh.

belter• 1 year ago

https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/final_-_rm_warre...

Blackcatmaxy• 1 year ago

Where is a good place to be reading more about how congress is actually reacting to the actions of Trump and co right now?

danso• 1 year ago

FYI the issue of free tax filing — including opposing TurboTax's lobbying efforts to kill it — has been a fairly popular topic on HN, to the tune of thousands of upvotes over the years:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

neilpointer• 1 year ago

I think it's really creepy and sad that this guy uses language like "This group has been deleted" when he's talking about people and not rows in a database.

blooalien• 1 year ago

In the minds of people like Musk, people are less valuable than rows of data in a database.

johnea• 1 year ago

Careful with that ax Eugene...

hnburnsy4• 1 year ago

The actual story is that Musk claims he deleted a group (18F) that assisted the IRS (among others) with the creation of the tax filing program. The group is (was) part of GSA.

e8wyohf• 1 year ago

Direct File is still fully functional and supported for use in 25 states this year.

Even if it were removed in the near future, as long as it's up, you can be confident that your tax info will be handled properly, as it uses the same interface for tax submissions as all the existing third party tax filing software.

-- DF engineer

IRS Direct File team disbanded

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