The new addendum also requires all these tax preparation companies to give their truly free options a specific badge: “IRS Free File program delivered by ,” so you can tell them apart from other versions which might sneakily require you to pay. In return, the IRS agreed to not make its own free filing software, something that the tax preparation companies thought could be a big competitor to their business. The Free File program initially said that filing software had to allow lower- and middle-income taxpayers to be able to file for free. Tax industry lobbying was how the IRS’s Free File was initially created, with the IRS agreeing to leave it up to those companies. But in the United States, Intuit has spent millions each year lobbying against these simpler systems which would eliminate the need for their services. The government uses data it already has on your income to fill out your taxes.
In several other countries, filing your taxes is a lot easier. They’ve also eliminated a restriction against the IRS making its own filing software. On Monday, the IRS released an addendum to its Free File program - the agreement with tax preparation companies intended to keep tax filing free - that now prohibits these companies from hiding the pages that allow you to file for free from Google and other search engines. Now, ProPublica reports that the IRS is taking steps against this.
This made it harder for users to find the free versions online, and many people ended up paying to file their taxes when they really didn’t have to. They, along with H&R Block, went so far as to keep the free versions from showing up in search engine results. Earlier this year, ProPublica published a report showing how Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, was misleading users into paying to file their taxes - something that’s supposed to be free in the first place for many.
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