Republicans take aim at popular program to drum up support for tax cuts for wealthy
Raw StoryRepublican 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. 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.
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A new IRS program is helping its first users file their income taxes electronically. And it’s free
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