Suppressed internal emails reveal that the IRS actively helped tax-prep giants suppress Free File

America is one of the only wealthy countries where you have to pay someone to prepare your tax return; in most other countries, the national tax office prepares a return for you and if it looks right to you, you just sign it and return it (you can always prepare your own return, too, or pay someone else to do it).

This has created billions of dollars in annual revenue for the tax-prep industry, which is hyper-concentrated and dominated by a couple of giant firms, notably Intuit (Turbotax) and H&R Block. These companies have engaged in years of aggressive lobbying to prevent free tax filing in the USA, agreeing to a "bargain" in the form of "Free File," through which free tax prep is provided by the big companies, but in a way that is so deceptive, riddled with dark patterns, and obfuscated that almost no one uses it (they also lobbied successfully to ban the IRS from advertising Free File's existence).

As part of its outstanding reporting on Free File, the IRS and the tax-prep industry, Propublica put in public records requests for emails between the IRS and the tax-prep industry's government relations people and lobbyists, only to have the IRS refuse to release them -- until Propublica successfully sued them and forced them to hand over the documents.

It's easy to see why the IRS didn't want these emails released. They show a consistent pattern of tax industry shills "bargaining" to offer less and less to the American public, putting more and more limits on the usefulness of Free File, while the IRS -- charged with regulating and overseeing these companies -- rolls over and rubber-stamps each of these proposals, never making a counteroffer on behalf of the American people. Read the rest