“Every time you see a TurboTax ad, remember,” Elizabeth Warren* recently tweeted, “they’ve spent millions of dollars lobbying to make the tax-filing process as difficult and time-consuming as possible. All to protect their bottom line. But now the IRS is testing out a truly free Direct File option.”
So what? It’s Congress, charged with writing tax code, that has spent decades making filing both difficult and time-consuming. TurboTax only exists because Congress has created a byzantine code.
Moreover, tax preparation outfits are lobbying to oppose the federal government using taxpayer dollars to put them out of business. If TurboTax were lobbying against flattening or simplifying our byzantine code, I would be appalled myself. In this case, they’re lobbying against the efforts of a deranged apparatchik to nationalize another industry.
Warren not only wants the government to write tax code, enforce tax code, and withdraw taxes from your paycheck, she wants to file your taxes, as well. It is a guarantee that any government program created to “prepare” taxes would evolve into a government program that cuts the citizen out of the process completely. Our withholding system is bad enough. We don’t need salaried workers even more disconnected from the price of government.
Contra Joe Biden, paying higher taxes isn’t a patriotic act. An American has the right to pay the bare minimum permissible by law by aggressively tracking down every legal “loophole” and write-off in the code. Every penny you keep benefits your family and the economy, while every dollar you hand over to Warren is wasted or worse.
Private companies like TurboTax are incentivized to create practical and easy ways to save consumers money to stay in business. I use it. It’s excellent. I’m happy they make a profit. The IRS, which would be prefilling forms by the tens of millions, is incentivized to please politicians. It gains nothing from making your life easier, which is obvious to anyone who is compelled to deal with a state agency on virtually any issue.
None of this is to mention that the IRS is often used as a partisan vehicle and has proven repeatedly that it can’t be trusted. We should be stripping it of power, not expanding its duties.
For example, an IRS Direct File program pilot program was recently launched in 12 states, even though no such program was ever authorized by Congress. The “Inflation Reduction Act” set aside $15 million to study a “free” program. So the IRS used that money to build a platform, because the IRS acts like every other federal agency and does whatever it pleases.
If Warren wanted to make the tax-filing process less difficult and time-consuming for us, she would be on a crusade to simplify the code. Instead, she claims that the tax-funded program, estimated to cost upwards of $249 million per year (which means, by the end, billions), is “truly free.” Can we really trust with our tax policy someone who doesn’t comprehend the most fundamental workings of money?
*I don’t mean to pick on Elizabeth Warren so often, it’s just that her irremediable dishonesty and dour authoritarianism make her the perfect straw-woman.
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