Every tax season, I join millions of Americans who spend an average of $290 a year for the privilege of paying my taxes. I shouldn’t have to pay to give the government my money – and you shouldn’t either. Once upon a time, President Donald Trump and right-hand man Elon Musk agreed. But the tax laws are so complicated that without professional help from an accountant or online preparation service, it’s difficult for taxpayers to know they’re paying the right amount.
Or it was – until last year. In 2024, the IRS debuted the Direct File program, which I helped build as a Treasury Department official. Direct File is an easy-to-use free tax-filing software that helps Americans calculate how much they owe by asking straightforward questions, filling out the forms and then filing their taxes for them. Now, it looks all but certain that Musk and Trump are going to kill it, leaving American taxpayers in the dust.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration blew past a May 5 deadline set by 175 members of Congress who support Direct File to declare their intentions for the program. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be under oath testifying in front of some of those same members of Congress on the House Financial Services Committee, and they will have the opportunity to press him on whether American families will continue to shell out hundreds of dollars next April.
But the writing seems to be on the wall. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has already told the team to stop working on developing the new version of Direct File for next year, and many have been laid off or departed.
So why would DOGE target Direct File? I can think of only one reason: It is a modern technology product providing value for the American people, which shows that the government can efficiently deliver lower costs and better service to taxpayers – a direct threat to its slash-and-burn agenda. DOGE’s tactics are based on dogma that says the government and its resources (human and otherwise) are irreversibly broken, incompetent and wasteful. But Direct File has demonstrated that’s false.
Its reviews are sparkling: Americans who have tried it love it, and private sector companies would have swooned at its stats. Last year, a government-run survey found that 90% of users rated Direct File as excellent or above average. Direct File’s “net promotion score” – a widely used customer sentiment measure that evaluates the likelihood of promoting a product to friends – was higher than those of Netflix, Wawa and Paypal. And customer support, which is often a pain point for companies, was a bright spot for Direct File, according to the IRS survey.
The version piloted in spring 2024 could be used for simple tax returns and was expanded to more states and more complex tax situations earlier this year. The services have been available in English and Spanish and provided live customer support from IRS employees in both languages.
Direct File succeeded by deliberately breaking bad patterns that doomed other government efforts to deploy new technology. For starters, the program was the first consumer technology product built primarily in-house at the IRS rather than assembled externally in hopes it would work for the government and its customers.
Also, no part of the program was built in a technology silo. Senior Treasury and IRS leaders, a multidisciplinary group of lawyers, policy professionals and advocates for taxpayers, worked alongside engineers, designers and product people to bust all kinds of obstacles immediately. So, if taxpayers didn’t understand the software’s instructions in user testing, the team would draft, edit and code new language without missing critical deadlines. And every part of the tool was tested over and over as it was created – Direct File was built with taxpayers, not for taxpayers.
That allowed the government to deliver results quickly. Direct File went from concept to pilot in just nine months – unheard of speed in creating new government technology, where implementation is usually measured in years and sometimes decades.
What’s to hate? Well, the software industry sees Direct File as a threat to their customer base, even though taxpayers still can choose to use them to prepare returns. Intuit, for example, spent a record amount lobbying to kill the program and donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. The industry – and their friends in Congress – argue that Direct File is a waste of money because of the free versions of private software already available.
But free is never actually free. In just the last year, the Federal Trade Commission settled with H&R Block for $7 million over its deceptive claims about “free” tax filing. This follows a $141 million Intuit settlement for charging taxpayers for services it claimed were free.
So maybe it’s the tax prep industry that caused DOGE to take aim at Direct File. But I think it’s something deeper. In January, Bessent suggested that he’d keep an open mind about Direct File. By February, Musk sabotaged the possibility of new users trying the program with a tweet that wrongly implied the program had been “deleted.”
Why the evolution? Perhaps because Direct File wasn’t failing – it was working. It no doubt terrifies DOGE that Direct File undermines its premise. It demonstrates that the government can build great technology with great customer experience quickly and in cooperation with political leaders and civil servants. It demonstrates that while culture change in government is necessary, institutional arson is not.
It demonstrates that government can work.
Julie Brinn Siegel served as deputy chief of staff of the Treasury Department in the Biden administration, where she led the initial team that built Direct File. She is also the former deputy federal chief operating officer at the Office of Management and Budget, where she oversaw the United States Digital Service.
