Republicans take aim at popular program to drum up support for tax cuts for wealthy

Republican lawmakers are looking to roll back a program to make the Internal Revenue Service more user friendly as a ploy to garner sympathy for tax cuts for the rich.

The IRS extended a pilot program earlier this year allowing some Americans to file their taxes directly to the agency for free, which many users praised as "so darn easy" to use, but more than two dozen GOP lawmakers are calling on president-elect Donald Trump to strangle the popular initiative in its cradle, reported MSNBC.

"This isn’t the first time that these two lawmakers have taken direct fire at Direct File," wrote columnist Hayes Brown. "They introduced a similar bill earlier this year and have joined their colleagues in denouncing the Biden administration’s investment in the IRS despite it being a net savings for taxpayers. It’s also worth noting that the letter writers cc’ed billionaire budget bros Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, in hopes of putting Direct File in the crosshairs of their cockamamie cost-cutting commission."

Reps. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Chuck Edward (R-NC) wrote a letter to Trump arguing the IRS has "a clear conflict of interest" and suggesting the agency would cheat taxpayers out of their money, but Brown wrote that Republican lawmakers were engaged in a nefarious scheme for their wealthy benefactors.

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"It feels likely then that Smith and Edwards are trying to ingratiate themselves with wealthier Americans who would stand to benefit more from a less popular IRS," Brown wrote. "The more friction in the system, the more visible of a target the IRS becomes for average Americans; the more people who are frustrated with the IRS, the better their case for cutting even more taxes for the wealthy."

"It also doesn’t hurt to be in the good graces of massive tax preparation companies like Intuit, which have spent years and millions of dollars to ensure that filing taxes is as painful a process as possible," Brown added. "Among the reforms they blocked was a plan to go further than Direct File, letting many taxpayers file pre-populated forms for free."

Polling has found a majority of Americans dislike or downright hate doing their taxes each year, and the IRS has found the average American spends about 13 hours preparing their 1040 form each year, so Brown said the streamlined process offered by Direct File is "a major boon for taxpayers."

"The net effect is that there’s no upside to murdering Direct File ahead of tax season beyond making the federal government less responsive and useful in the eyes of Americans," Brown wrote. "Republicans can falsely claim that they’re trying to save taxpayers’ money from the clutches of the IRS. It’s clear what they’re really trying to claw back is a massive refund of Americans’ time and energy in the name of making everything a little bit worse."