SCOOP: DOGE moved to kill Direct File, the IRS's popular free tax filing tool, days after meeting with private tax filing software lobbyists. www.wired.com/story/doge-d...
A key operative from DOGE initiated plans to potentially kill Direct File, the free tax filing tool developed by the IRS, after offering assurances it would be spared from cuts.
After the revolution, we need to reserve a special camp just for industry lobbyists. Preferably a remote island surrounded by sharks that can't be bribed.
Fuckers
We can’t have nice things like social democracies. We pay top dollar to tax companies to make top dollar payments to a government that gives us little in return for it. Mainly because people have been convinced to vote on social control issues rather than economic ones.
Like we didn't see that coming. Oh, you can make more money for your software company and share it with us? Oh, ok!
All for the oligarchy!!!
The MAGA definition of “government efficiency” = pay to play corporate corruption.
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No way. Theyve got stone cold professionals working there, completely impenetrable and a fortress against corruption. They even have names like the knights of yore. Like Sir Big Balls.
A lot of people can’t afford to buy Tax software, fee to efile state, or hire a company to process their taxes. And, the IRS free tax filing tool only benefited a small portion of filers that had very simple returns. This just a continuation of this admin’s cruelty.
Fuck these fkers
Scum suckers sucking.
thought DOGE was supposed to save us money?
Makes perfect sense; screwing everyday Americans to financially benefit their rich pals.
The U.S. tax code has over 9,000 sections, frequent changes, many credits, and itemized deductions. Each part carries the genetic imprint of a lobbying group, encoded like DNA into the fabric of the law. I guess it’s fitting that there is also a lobbying group at the meta level as well.
The relentless capitalist desire to monetize literally everything is tearing this country apart.
Scoop unnecessary. As soon as Direct File was killed. There was only one possible reason why.
Shout out to the under-35 men who swung right to vote Trump last year.
in any other country this would be called "corruption"
”Does it work and do people like it? Yeah? Let’s kill it then.”
Throwing away popular software we already paid for .... In the name of efficiency
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www.politico.com/news/2025/07...
The White House said DOGE’s operational head had left. Then he tried to lead a meeting.
fraud and waste alert
But we’re going to get $5K checks from all their savings! I’m sure we’ll be cashing in soon
Filing by mail it is, then. They can try to read my fucked up handwriting and a letter with my thoughts.
:(
America is for sale. Everything will be pay to play thanks to the idiot Republican voters.
Not that it matters but everything the government does is paid for by the taxpayers. That's me. So it is not free.
There should be "no file". The IRS literally has every document I have been given to do my taxes so could literally do everything and send me a bill.
OK, they don't have my charitable deductions or Schedule C expenses. So they could send me a corrections form and I could just give them that.
That’s messed up!
Not just assholes, corrupt af assholes.
It’s all about money. Feathering their own nest. People should not put up with this.
All agencies heading in this direction. And then We The People will have to pay extra to receive services once provided by the government.
The Libertarian dream -- "Don't Tread on Me" (If I don't use it, I don't want you to use my tax dollars to receive it.)
Gee, what a surprise. There’s a reason why creatures like Elon Musk and Trump are billionaires. They’re both greedy and corrupt.
So they love taxation.
Populism! Working-class party!
Of course.
These guys are so foolish.
A scoop, but completely expected.
Intuit and others have long worked against Direct File.
Of course they did!
Wow, Awesome cost cutting measures! Right #MAGA ?
Nothing stinks about this...
Le Pew Le Pew
The love of money is the root of all evil.
More "criminals" in jails-more men might be enlisted. Everything will be like in Russia pretty soon
I wonder if a briefcase of cash was also at the meeting?
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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
This makes me so angry. This was the first year I used it (instead of manually filling out forms) and it was really nice. And, OUR TAX DOLLARS PAID TO CREATE IT - it belongs to US!
Greed, it's not like everyone filing taxes was using this service. The companies just weren't making the same amount of profits that they used to make in the past. Greed.
payoff completed?
Yet another example of how they are hurting the majority of the American people to benefit the rich.
Of course
Yay Republicans find yet another way to screw over consumers in favor of big time donations from tax preparation services
GOP has been after this program for some time: www.taxnotes.com/research/fed...
Direct File is successful, efficient, accurate, secure - and primarily benefits tax filers with less than $85K AGI. Another Congressional assist to gut the mission of the IRS. Will impact filing season 2026.
It's also very hard to get hardcopy of the forms and instructions. I ordered the ones I needed in January of '25- they trickled in during late March-early April.
After all the shit of this administration we need to find a way to get money out of politics.
Not that many in Congress currently would roll with that outside of like Bernie and AOC.
That free system took years and years of work to get and be made available to all of us. This is rotten and unfair, why should we pay a fee in order to pay taxes. Maybe we should stop giving money to this regime
It’s difficult to think of a more useless set of companies than the likes of Turbotax.
I'm pissed because they're taking away a free service that's already been built, but I'm also pissed for all the software engineers at IRS that built it. That's ridiculous.
Boy, they fold quicker than a tariffed penguin! This is a milestone, though. This is the 100th time Trump has figured out how to extract "campaign funds/Inauguration donations" to privatize something being done better and cheaper by the Government. Medicare up next?
trump behaves as though he is actually trying to totally break this country
no hyperbole
DOGE was never about efficiency. Not even a little bit.
It was only billionaires on stage at the inauguration, you mean everyone doesn’t have accountants?
Of course! Isn’t it all about privatizing every government function so a few corporate CEOs get richer?!
Lobbyists? Gee, I wonder what the motivation was there? Another government contract award is a valuable thing. What other awards have there been with the DOGE interns?
It is important for our own sanity that we pay attention to what they are DOING over what they are SAYING. In this case, they are privileging private business over the financial health of taxpayers.
Plenty o' time for the Insiders to buy stock in the private software companies...
Not surprising. They were the reason it didn't exist earlier.
Privatizing every possible aspect of our society
That is efficient
We all knew this was coming, but my god is it infuriating. Nothing says efficiency like killing the recently introduced alternative to the most pointless rent-seeking industry this side of... honestly not sure I can think of an industry with less of a reason beyond lining pockets to exist
🤬🤬🤬 who owns our government??? Corporations and their skeevy lobbyists.
Grifting and waste!
Fuck paying taxes to this illegitimate government. I am getting everything I pay taxes for stripped from me while having guns pointed at my head and boots on my neck.
Of course.
Dumb ass mfas are going to keep voting for Republicans until the whole country is broke, sick, and stupid. SMFH
If you’re a conservative, what is the argument for this?
“Yes, I want to pay more and make it more difficult file taxes?”
Is direct file a creation of the IRS that they (assuming an ideal world and no DOGE involvement) have the authority to kill, or is it created by statute and legally only Congress can kill it?
Lobbyists are scum and should be treated as such. But who am I kidding, it'll never happen so long as there are pedophiles in the White House and Congress.
SCOOP? Really. A big R donor gets what they want? Killing FREE filing for 80% of the country? Not a SCOOP, just the normal day to day grift.
He will fuck every single one of us so him and his friends have just a little bit more money that they won’t spend anyway
Government against the people
"DOGE moved to kill Direct File, the IRS's popular free tax filing tool, days after getting paid by private tax filing software lobbyists."
FIFY
Corruption is a feature not a bug.
Corruption.
The words I have would get me put on a list for SURE.
Perhaps I am naive, but I used to think "the government won't let you file your taxes for free because of lobbying from tax preparers" was a conspiracy theory
The great thing (for Republicans) about this sort of stuff is that by the time people experience these cuts Democrats will be in control and Republicans can say "see, Govt. doesn't work, elect Republicans!" and people will have forgotten that the Govt. was destroyed by Republicans.
And the free tax filing worked really well, so much better than fucking turbo tax
DOGE will live in infamy as one of the most corrupt government groups to exist
And it wasn’t really free anyway. The .gov site was only available for certain participating states, (guess which ones?) and the free filing option on corporate software sites was restricted to the simplest of fed. filings that required fee-based upgrades for even the most basic filings.
Intuit delenda est
And that tool is limited to individuals whose incomes don't exceed working- & lower/middle-class levels.
Dump Intuit
The group was organized by Intuit <
A company sketchier than a Trump fundraising email.
So evil
Yeah these tax companies are a big reason why the tax code is so encyclopedic in length and complexity.
TurboTax's parent company, Intuit, has a history of lobbying against measures that would simplify the tax filing process or make it free.
Fuck "kill" it's already been developed. Fascist bullshit.
Look at the DOGE creeps bank accounts after the meeting.
Lobbyists should be illegal. They aren't speaking for the citizens. They're bugging politicians for the rich.
Of course they did.
GEE How NOT surprising
Well I for one have time and am petty so the IRS will be getting my 2025 tax return in the same fashion they got my 1988 return....handwritten and delivered via USPS. And this time, the return is many more pages than the 1988 one.
I feel like there used to be a name for this ..
Bribery ? Corruption ? Mob ? Extortion?
Can’t put my finger on it ..
DOGE is a Fascist weapon against democracy.
It was never about savings.
No fucking way! DOGE?
Well sure. All those companies that have tax prep offices around the country and tax prep software would be out of business.
Another private interest wants to make money on filing your taxes for you
Is this fighting the “corruption” that Elon and his fans have been going on about?
The “Populist” Right
Who is the “Deep State” now?
Now why would that be?
Even doing your own taxes is off the table.
You will have to pay services to file for you.
Fleecing of the flock. Go figure.
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Your daily dose of Trump administration corruption.
A note: it's fun trying to explain to non-US people that you had to do the paperwork through a private company because before this program there was no way to directly send the government the government documents you are required to send them
Of course they did. You didn’t expect anything different, did you?
Great (though infuriating) article.
I used TurboTax for more than a decade, until I gave Direct File a try last year and liked it.
I'll be doing my taxes by hand for the foreseeable future. Not giving a dime to Intuit or any of these other parasites.
Sue immediately @newyorkstateag.bsky.social @agwilliamtong.bsky.social @atg.wa.gov @agwilliamtong.bsky.social @philweiser.bsky.social @dananessel.bsky.social
That's the reason I like to see specific names attached to these types of stories. They might get a magazine. They might get free Pizza. Maybe they'll get Luigi. Whi knows? Know how IRS free file made everyone's life just a little better? Well so does publishing the names 🤣 It keeps them guessing
Personally when it comes to the government the only thing I want to see get kicked up the ladder is a punch in the face 🖕
Shocked, said no one.
This is one of the primary purposes of DOGE. Diminish government capacity and services so that private businesses can perform and charge the public for what should be core functions of government. Rent seeking business will insert themselves into the transactions collecting money for nothing...
Fraud, waste and abuse… NOT
