GOP lawmakers are framing the IRS’s free direct tax filing system as an example of the “weaponization of government against Americans.”
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The IRS has gradually rolled out a program to allow Americans to directly file taxes with the IRS.It’s designed to make filing taxes simpler and easier.A group of Republicans want Trump to end it, saying it’s government overreach.
More than two dozen House Republicans are asking President-elect Donald Trump to terminate the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) free direct tax filing system as soon as day one of his presidency.
Republican Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Chuck Edwards of North Carolina sent a letter to the president-elect on Tuesday urging him to end the program via executive order, saying that the program poses a “threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach.”
The letter was signed by 27 other Republicans and is also addressed to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leads of DOGE.
The program came about as the result of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $15 million in funding to study the creation of a website allowing Americans to directly file their taxes to the IRS for free. That led to the rollout of a pilot program that was available in 12 states last year, and is set to expand to 24 states in 2025.
A spokesperson for the IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Many Americans rely on tax-prep companies like TurboTax and H&R Block to do their taxes each year. The new program is designed to compete with those programs and make filing easier and less costly for Americans.
Smith and Edwards argued in their letter that the program represents a conflict of interest for the IRS — that the agency should not be in charge of both assessing taxes and enforcing tax crimes. The duo wrote that the agency “has little incentive to ensure hardworking Americans do not pay more than they owe in taxes.”
They also cast the free direct-file program as an example of the “weaponization of government against Americans,” a long-standing focus of Trump and MAGA-aligned right.
It is unclear whether Trump will take the lawmakers up on their request, and the Trump-Vance transition did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Republicans have broadly sought to roll back the $80 billion in additional funding for the IRS that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act, saying it will be used to enable the agency to target conservatives and ordinary taxpayers.
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