February 13, 2025

I make my living doing taxes, mostly. I mean, I do other accounting related stuff, but let’s be honest, without a complicated tax code and insane set of tax forms, I would be earning my money doing a much different set of number related tasks.

However, I hoped for years the US had an automatic filing system for people with simple returns, like most other modern, functional countries. After all, the IRS already knows your wages and interest income, since your employer and bank send that to them every year on your W-2s and 1099s.

The government easily has the ability to send you a postcard and say “here’s your refund or balance due, if you disagree, file a return”. (They already do this if you don’t file.)

I’ve turned away a least a handful (or two) of people in the past few years who had easy returns and I just felt guilty charging them our usual minimum fee (which is now $650).

So it really ticks me off that Elon Musk and his band of lunatics want to shut down the emerging “direct file” program the IRS started testing last year. Instead, people with simple returns will need to continue to pay one of the two big tax prep companies - Intuit or H&R Block.

Here is the Direct File site, if you’re interested, get it while it’s still around.