On the heels of Tax Day in the United States,
The Associated Pressreported Wednesday that the Trump administration plans to end Direct File, a free electronic program for filing tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the decision.
The news drew swift outrage, including from U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who
took aim at President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk on the billionaire's social media platform X.
"Donald Trump and Elon Musk are going after Direct File because it stops giant tax prep companies from ripping taxpayers off for services that should be free," said Warren. "Americans want a free and easy way to file their taxes—Trump and Musk want to take that away."
According to the
AP:
The program had been in limbo since the start of the Trump administration as Elon Musk and the
Department of Government Efficiency have slashed their way through the federal government. Musk posted in February on his social media site, X, that he had "deleted" 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as Direct File.
There was some hope that Musk, with his DOGE team of computer programmers, could take over Direct File and improve it. But the two people familiar with the decision to end Direct File said its future became clear when the IRS staff assigned to the program were told in mid-March to stop working on its development for the 2026 tax filing season.
Concerns about the future of the program—rolled out under the Biden administration—predated Musk's post. Dozens of congressional Republicans urged Trump to scrap the program in December, and the following month, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen revealed that throughout those 29 lawmakers' careers, they had taken more than $1.8 million in campaign contributions from "Big Tax Prep and their proxies."
Public Citizen was among the organizations that responded to the reporting on Wednesday by blasting the Trump administration for "taking money out of the pockets of working people and giving it away to their Big Business and tech bro buddies."
Yale Law School professor Natasha Sarin—who was previously an official at the U.S. Treasury Department—wrote on social media that "this is terrible, terrible, terrible news for the American people and the tax system. The only winners are high-cost tax preparers."
"President Trump has
said tax filing should be so simple that you could file on a postcard!" she noted. "The IRS had built something even better... It's devastating to watch so much good work undone."
While many Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives pushed to kill Direct File, multiple Democrats from the chamber joined the chorus of condemnation in response to Wednesday's reporting.
"IRS Direct File gave people a simple and FREE way to file their taxes. Trump wants to get rid of it and allow tax preparation corporations to continue to rip taxpayers off with predatory fees,"
said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). "So much for cutting costs for the American people."
Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) similarly
said that "Trump's plan to kill Direct File is a gift to billion-dollar tax prep companies at the expense of American families. Once again, he's siding with profits over people."
Rohit Chopra, whose previous roles in government include directing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under former President Joe Biden, called out one company in particular,
declaring the development "a big win for Intuit's profits on TurboTax, but a big loss for the public."
While Trump and Musk have framed their government-gutting work as an effort to make the federal bureaucracy more "efficient," their plans to destroy the program seem to accomplish the opposite. Before the news broke, Groundwork Collaborative senior fellow Kitty Richards
said in a Tuesday statement that "Direct File is a crystal clear example of government efficiency at work."
"Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay exorbitant fees to predatory for-profit companies just to file their taxes," Richard asserteds. "As cost-of-living remains top of mind for so many Americans, the government should invest in and expand tools like Direct File that put money back into the pockets of working families."
"Unfortunately, the president is waging a war against the IRS—and hamstringing vital taxpayer services like Direct File in the process—so his wealthy donors can cheat on their taxes," she added. "The only people who benefit from a weakened IRS are billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk."
