Congress is About To Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing (propublica.org)

Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. ProPublica reports: Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa). In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry's profits.

"This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program," said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.

Comments

Re:Blame Grover Norquist and the Anti-Tax Faction

[Pfhorrest]

Looking from European angle here too, so basically you are saying they are Republicans advocating anarchism?

Looking from an anarchist angle here, no not at all. Republicans only want the democratic government to get out of the way of the various kinds of non-democratic governance that they approve of: corporate and religious. They want the powerful to get away with running roughshod over everyone else, and the masses to be powerless to band together to do anything to stop them. They love big government when it serves the interests of those already in power. That's the complete opposite of anarchism, which is radically democratic, anti-hierarchical, and egalitarian.