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United States

IRS Chief Says Agency Plans To End Free Filing Program (cnbc.com) 152

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Bill Long said the agency will end its Direct File program after a limited pilot and one full filing season. From a report: President Donald Trump's massive spending and policy bill includes funding to research and "replace any direct e-file programs run by the Internal Revenue Service."

Already, the program is "gone," Long said at a tax professional summit on July 28, Bloomberg Law reports. "You've heard of Direct File, that's gone," Long said. "Big beautiful Billy wiped that out. I don't care about Direct File. I care about direct audit."

IRS Chief Says Agency Plans To End Free Filing Program

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  • US (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 01, 2025 @11:24AM (#65560116)
    Where you have to pay, in order to pay your taxes.
    • Re:US (Score:5, Insightful)

      by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:19PM (#65560248)
      You don't get to have the biggest GDP in the world without having a system that props up entire industries that most civilized nations don't require.
    • The UK is going that way as well - for businesses and some individuals [www.gov.uk], many individuals can still submit a tax return on paper of on-line (web) [service.gov.uk]. It is slowly creeping to engulf more people.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    We never had anything resembling direct file with the Canadian Revenue Agency. You're as bad as us, you should be embarrassed.

  • by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @11:32AM (#65560132) Homepage
    "I don't care about Direct File. I care about direct audit for poor people", Fixed your quote for you Bill.
    • by mmattox ( 7160131 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @11:37AM (#65560148)
      And just how much did Intuit and HR Block donate to Trump?
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      "I don't care about Direct File. I care about direct audit for poor people"

      Most audits are for people with Sched-C or K-1 income.

      Those aren't "poor people"

      Top income brackets are ten times more likely to be audited than people at the bottom.

      What triggers IRS Audits? [nolo.com]

      • True, although the odds of being audited are still pretty slight. The problem is that even if they are caught, the penalties are usually not severe.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Most audits were for people with Sched-C or K-1 income.

        Those aren't "poor people"

        Top income brackets were ten times more likely to be audited than people at the bottom.

        Fixed that for you.

      • by Targon ( 17348 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:41PM (#65560296)

        And that is why Trump and Musk cut the budget to the IRS, to reduce the number of audits of wealthy people.

        • Trump is aiming to reduce the audits of wealthy people (and everyone else) to zero. He wants to abolish the IRS. Pay attention when he speaks, eventually you will hear it. He said it during the election and he's said it since the election. Tariffs, other taxes, but no income taxes.

          It would put rocket engines on the economy.

      • Most audits are for people with Sched-C or K-1 income.

        Today.

        What the IRS chief appears to be saying is that there will be more audits, which implies more audits for people with lower incomes. In other words: many ordinary Trump voters.

      • by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @04:23PM (#65561014) Journal

        Top income brackets are ten times more likely to be audited than people at the bottom.

        Mostly correct, but subtly wrong on the details. Top brackets are 10x more likely than the national average of individual taxpayers. Report from the GAO, 2022 [gao.gov]

        But curiously, folks at the bottom are nearly 2x more likely to be audited than the national average. Claim the Earned Income Tax Credit? 3x more likely.

        It makes sense to audit the very highest earners, though: that's where the money is, where the most...creative...filings occur, and thus the greatest gap between tax owed and tax reported/paid. In other words: auditing those folks recoups the most. GAO-24-106112 [gao.gov].

        Best to take a look at those reports now, before the Ministry of Truth makes them disappear.

    • by aitikin ( 909209 )

      "I don't care about Direct File. I care about direct audit for poor people", Fixed your quote for you Bill.

      "I don't care about poor people," Fixed your version of his version of the quote for him.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @01:05PM (#65560392)
      That they quit because it sucked and they have a solid college degree so they could get work elsewhere. This was before Trump completely destroyed the economy in 6 months so they were able to move around a bit as they started out after college.

      The company was pretty terrible and they never got w-2s to my kid and my kid being a dumb young kid like all kids didn't think it was that big of a deal so they didn't file that W-2.

      I have now helped them with about $700 in legal expenses because the IRS is so incredibly understaffed that my kid has been completely unable to get through to anyone in order to sort out something as simple as an unfiled W-2 and a few hundred dollars in taxes.

      The Republican party figured out in the 90s that if they sabotage the government dumb people would come to believe the government was bad and not that the act of sabotage was the problem.

      So every year a bunch of dipshits vote Republican to tear down the government because government bad and the Republicans make the government worse for those people so they vote Republican because government bad and the cycle continues.

      I do think the cycle will collapse soon with the total collapse of all Democratic institutions and the institution of a Christian theocratic State similar to Saudi Arabia but with a different book.

      But hey at least those 14 trans girls in the midwest can't play field hockey right?
    • "I don't care about Direct File. I care about direct audit for poor people", Fixed your quote for you Bill.

      For or against? Because poor(er) people probably don't make (or fake) enough to warrant an audit. On the other hand, very rich people do, and are apparently very good at paying their accountants/lawyers to game the tax system in their favor. Rich people *definitely* don't want to get audited, but are the ones who should be and the return on the IRS time/effort would probably be worth it.

      IRS tops $1 billion in past-due taxes collected from millionaires [irs.gov]

      Turns out IRS audits of wealthy offer terrific ret [harvard.edu]

  • by k3v0 ( 592611 )
    are we winning yet?
  • paper forms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @11:34AM (#65560142)

    We should all do the IRS a favor and print out the forms and fill them out by hand. We should all mail them in for manual processing. See there is still a free option, its just not software and is more work for everyone including the IRS. Bury them in their own work.

    • by Froze ( 398171 )

      You have my vote!

    • Re:paper forms (Score:5, Insightful)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @11:50AM (#65560172) Homepage Journal

      Stamps aren't free. (And hand delivering will involve some kind of transportation cost.)

      There's no such thing as a free lunch.

      (But I agree, except this doesn't seem to be about free filing through third party sites, only about direct free filing.)

    • I'm onboard for this plan. The inconvenience to me is definitely worth the disruption to the IRS.

    • I don't have a problem with filling out the forms by hand. The problem is that you need to know *how* to fill them out, which in the past, when I had to fill them out by hand, took hours of reading IRS publications. If you just worked at a job, didn't own anything, and had no deductible expense, not a problem. But if you own anything, whether stocks, bonds, house, or even a car, or give things to charity, lotsa luck reading all those publications. Or, if you moved for your job, or had expenses related t

      • TBF if you have your previous tax returns and your financial situation hasn't really changed, you should be able to more easily figure it out by referring to the previous guys

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        I don't have a problem with filling out the forms by hand. The problem is that you need to know *how* to fill them out, which in the past, when I had to fill them out by hand, took hours of reading IRS publications. If you just worked at a job, didn't own anything, and had no deductible expense, not a problem. But if you own anything, whether stocks, bonds, house, or even a car, or give things to charity, lotsa luck reading all those publications. Or, if you moved for your job, or had expenses related to your job. Or had a side gig. Or any number of other things where it's not obvious how to handle them for taxes.

        That's really entirely the fault of laziness by the IRS and/or Congress. We should have laws requiring all of those companies to provide the complete set of information necessary to file your taxes in a computer-digestible form. There's no excuse for having to manually change several *hundred* lines one at a time to tell TurboTax that they are short-term or long-term gains, or whatever the one random piece of information that it needs from my Edward Jones statement every f**king year on a third of the tra

    • Re:paper forms (Score:4, Interesting)

      by usedtobestine ( 7476084 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:50PM (#65560322)

      I do this every year. It takes me about 30 minutes to complete both state and federal tax forms.

    • I actually do this, except I do use their fill in forms and print it out with the numbers in. Just easier for me. If you have to change a number, you can change it in the form without having to start over with a new blank form. My taxes are outside the scope of what was free filing.
    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @01:06PM (#65560396)
      You seem to be under a mistaken believe. Your beef isn't with the IRS. They are just the guys that collect the money. Money that you want because that's what pays for a functioning civilization.

      You're complaint is with the people actively sabotaging that civilization. Or it should be but I suspect you are heavily distracted by whatever moral panic you think is the more important than having clean drinking water and disaster relief.
      • "Money that you want because that's what pays for a functioning civilization."

        When have taxes ever paid for more than a quarter of what the government spends? Does the fact that the Pentagon can't pass an audit mean they are writing blank checks without feeling restricted by Congressional authorization, which the Fed, ultimately, cashes?

        Why do we even need an IRS?

        • by Pizza ( 87623 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @05:38PM (#65561246) Homepage Journal

          When have taxes ever paid for more than a quarter of what the government spends?

          Uh, most (if not all) of this country's entire existence?

          For example, in FY2024 federal taxes paid for about 3/4ths of the government expenditures, and that is historically pretty high. State and local governments tend to generally break even ("balanced budget") as a matter of law.

          But let's not facts get in the way of your hyperbole.

        • Which is okay we don't exactly advertise the shit out of it.

          So most of the debt is held by Americans and is more or less money supply. In other words it's just money in the economy.

          What we all overseas is about 20% of the debt. It would be very easy to pay it off just by taking back some of the money we gave to the 1% in the last decade let alone the last 50 years.

          But the trick is we absolutely do not want to pay it off. That debt artificially props up the value of the US dollar.

          That lets us
  • by echo123 ( 1266692 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:01PM (#65560208)

    Nearly 300,000 filers used Direct File for the 2025 tax season, and 94% of users who completed an IRS survey rated their experience as “excellent” or “above average,” according to an internal IRS report obtained by Nextgov/FCW [nextgov.com].

    From the linked to article:
    The IRS is reportedly ending the Direct File, but a report obtained via the Freedom of Information Act says that 94% of users rated their experience as “excellent” or “above average.”

    TFA is light on details, but the article it links to is solid. And it makes me curse the currently corrupt GOP all the more.

    • ... currently corrupt GOP ...

      The GOP has been corrupt for 30 years. They've promoted oligarchy from Reagan onward, with fascism being acceptable to US congress, before Reagan.

  • Shocked (Score:2, Insightful)

    My shocked face when a shitty person campaigned on doing shitty things and follows through.

  • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:13PM (#65560230)

    My entire life i've heard about defecit this and debt that, debt crisis, we're going off the cliff yadda yadda yadda but yet for my entire life Republicans in Congress, Presidents, their media, Fox, AM talk radio has always been anti-IRS, they're evil, they're bad "because taxes are bad" therefore "the agency that collects the taxes is bad" as if the IRS passes or set the tax policy.

    The "tax gap" or the amount of collected taxes verusus what we should expect to correct is approx $540B a year [irs.gov]. We are leaving a half a trillion dollars per year on the table because we don't want to fund the IRS to collect it.

    That $8B a year for 10 years for the IRS to close that gap was already working, it was already very profitable then we shit canned it because "taxes bad!".

    Hilariously these same folks love love love to compare the government budget to a business yet overlook the idea that if you were unable to collect money from like 1/5 of your customers you would rather cut staff than just go and collect that money to balance your budget. Un-fucking-real. "My job only pays me for 4/5 of my hours worked. Oh well! No problem here! Guess we should just accept that!"

    If you want lower taxes, fine then lower taxes but you should still want as close to 100% compliance with your tax code. having some people not paying their taxes is just societal and budgetary rot. At this point it's clear thats the goal of these rubes and ghouls.

    • If they'd simplify the tax system and make it a basic: "You earn X, pay Y% regardless of income source" and remove all deductions it would become a non issue. Enforcement would become simply chasing down people who aren't declaring income. But the poor don't want this because the current system makes them pay 0, and the rich don't want it because they're experts at gaming the current system for their own benefit. So the shrinking middle class gets crapped on.
      • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:26PM (#65560260)

        You did the thing! This is completely irrelevant to the point, again, the IRS does not set how taxes work. The complexity of the tax system is a Legislative issue. They are just there to collect it and they can collect it if we fund them. The purposeful conflation of these things is part of how the IRS has had it's budget slashed for decades.

      • If they'd simplify the tax system and make it a basic: "You earn X, pay Y% regardless of income source"

        This would lead to situations where someone getting a raise could potentially lose money. It should be first x amount of income is tax free. Next x amount of income is taxed at this higher rate. After that, income between x and y is taxed at this rate. And any income beyond that is taxed at this rate. This is how it currently works, although tons of people don't understand that and are convinced that them getting a small raise will lower their take home income.

        But the poor don't want this because the current system makes them pay 0

        This could still very easily be implemented. In

        • This could still very easily be implemented. Income $100,000/year, tax rate is 0.

          Milton Friedman suggested that the lowest tax brackets could be tax-negative, to give poor people a little extra help. Bonus it removes the economic incentive to stay on welfare (because currently you lose it if you find a job).

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      You have to remember that their politics are about personal gain, and there are a LOT of grifter and tax cheats in the republican party. Though more importantly, ever since the gingrich era, their goal has been to weaken the government.. starve it till they can finally shove its head under the water and end the american experiment once and for all. So if it hurts the economy, the IRS, government stability, all those are pluses for the GoP.
  • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:28PM (#65560268) Journal
    The end goal is to make you pay [slashdot.org].

    There was no way in hell something which was simple to use, which people liked, and was free, was ever going to last in this regime.
  • Who Wanted This? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:28PM (#65560272)
    So they're killing a system that was more convenient for filers, more convenient for the IRS to process over paper filing, received overwhelmingly positive feedback from its users, and was already paid for by our tax dollars. Other than Dicknuts and the tax preparers, who wants this?
    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      Other than Dicknuts and the tax preparers, who wants this?

      Libertarians and MAGAts. The former because the Federal Gov't shouldn't be doing anything that isn't expressly defined in the constitution. The latter because their choice in media told them it was bad.

  • by wernst ( 536414 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:34PM (#65560290) Homepage

    At the risk of sounding like both a shill for a real company, AND a shill for something that sounds like a scam, FreeTaxUSA has been a viable alternative to TurboTax and H&R Block and KreditKarma for 10+ years now. Federal filings really are free, and state filings are around $15. For a few years I was doing my complex taxes and my simple taxes on both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and they always came out the same, except for the price I was paying for the software.

    I agree that the IRS removing their free Direct Filing program is a bad but predictable move for this bad but predictable administration, but there are still great options out there.

    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      +1 for FreeTaxUSA. Been using them for a few years now, no complaints.
    • Yes, and several years ago when I used it, they were storing user credentials, and god knows what else, unencrypted. I didn't even file through them that year, I simeply used them to do the calculations.

    • At the risk of sounding like both a shill for a real company, AND a shill for something that sounds like a scam, FreeTaxUSA has been a viable alternative to TurboTax and H&R Block and KreditKarma for 10+ years now. Federal filings really are free, and state filings are around $15. For a few years I was doing my complex taxes and my simple taxes on both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and they always came out the same, except for the price I was paying for the software.

      I agree that the IRS removing their free Direct Filing program is a bad but predictable move for this bad but predictable administration, but there are still great options out there.

      DirectFile was nowhere near as good as the services you listed so it is unclear why removing it is bad

  • by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Friday August 01, 2025 @12:35PM (#65560292)
    Republicans have been routinely gutting the IRS over the the years. Increasingly complex tax codes significantly benefit the wealthy. Reduced IRS resources result in fewer audits, fewer enforcement staff, and fewer dollars collected. The "Tax Gap" is the difference between what's owed vs what's collected. The tax gap exceeded $600 billion in 2022 - https://www.pgpf.org/article/t... [pgpf.org]
    Eliminating "free" methods for filers of non-complex taxes forces regular payers to purchase or use tax filers. This is just more mandated corporate profit. We're being fleeced by the GOP/MAGA cult.
  • Go to a consumption tax. No more 1040 forms, no more April 15, no more deductions from your paycheck and biggest of all, no more having the government know how you earned every penny.

    Before someone one-note-nelly's that the consumption tax is regressive, so is an income tax. They fixed the income tax, they can fix the consumption tax.

    Replacing the income tax with a consumption tax would also allow major cuts at the IRS since they would only need to focus on businesses.

  • For earners in the 97th, 98th, and 99th percentile, a flat tax on all income and capital gains at the tax percentage for earners in the 96th percentile. Top earners shouldn't have to pay exorbitant tax lawyer fees.
  • DirectFile was a nice effort but it wasn't as capable as the multiple free federal and state tax filing services available out there. It cost millions of dollars to create and would have cost millions more to support and enhance. It really didn't make sense.

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