Profile in Courage: Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.)

In the lead up to Tax Day, millions of Americans are anxiously scrambling to get their tax returns completed in-person or online. Lawmakers have made the process far more difficult than it needs to be by inserting 17,600 pages worth of rules and stipulations in the tax code. And now, some bureaucrats and members of Congress want to make things even worse by giving the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) the power to prepare returns on behalf of taxpayers.

Fortunately, there are a few brave civil servants willing to stand up and fight this costly and dangerous idea. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) has led the charge against the IRS’ “Direct File” Program, which foolishly allows the IRS to act as both tax filer and preparer. The fight against Direct File has been anything but easy, and program proponents have been quick to smear lawmakers such as Rep. Smith for defending taxpayers. For having taxpayers’ back and fighting the good fight against government overreach, Rep. Smith is most certainly a Profile in Courage.

Compared to many of his fellow lawmakers, Rep. Smith had a humble beginning. He grew up on his family’s farm, which had been passed down over four generations. His dad was a preacher and auto mechanic, while his mom worked at the manufacturing firm Briggs & Stratton. His parents’ versatility and blue-collar roots provided a sturdy upbringing for Smith who gained an appreciation early on for the value of a hard-day’s work. He may have been raised in the same town as his great-great grandparents, but that didn’t keep Smith from dreaming big. He was the first in his family to graduate college (from the University of Missouri), and soon enough, Smith was on his way to law school at Oklahoma City University.

One incident from his law school days instilled in Smith the importance of not taking anything for granted. During his studies, his grandfather passed away and left the farm to Jason’s father and uncle. The heirs no longer had an interest in farming and moved to sell the estate, but Jason desperately wanted to hold onto the farm and continue his family’s traditions. With the help of a local banker, he managed to cobble together a loan to purchase the land from his relatives and keep the Smiths in family farming. Recounting the episode, Smith notes that Dodd-Frank banking regulations would have made it all-but-impossible today for a local banker to take a chance on a struggling student for a sizable loan.

The future lawmaker quickly developed an appreciation for limited government ideals and sought higher office. In 2005, he successfully ran to serve Missouri’s 150th Legislative District and became the youngest member of the Missouri House of Representatives at age 25. In his roles as Majority Assistant Deputy Whip and on the Agriculture Policy Committee, Education Committee, and Judiciary Committee, he quickly became known as a champion of fiscal responsibility and rule of law.

After Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) resigned her seat in Congress in 2013, a special election ensued for the 8th Congressional district of Missouri. State Rep. Smith saw his opportunity, and became the Republican nominee through a tedious, six-round selection process. Smith won a resounding victory in the general election, clinching nearly 70 percent of the vote against Democrat Steve Hodges.

The family farmer and preacher’s son has been in Congress ever since, fighting for taxpayers and championing fiscal responsibility. In 2017, Rep. Smith worked closely with the Trump administration on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which, “led to a nearly 5 [percent] increase in wages for American workers, a full 1 [percent] increase in economic growth over the average of the previous decade, and the lowest unemployment and poverty rates in 50 years.” He’s also used his position as Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee to rail against out-of-control spending and champion fiscal sanity.

Through his leadership the House of Representatives passed H.R. 7024, the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act (TRAFWA) in January. TRAFW would reinstate research and development (R&D) expensing, a provision responsible for a $2 trillion investment explosion after the passage of the TCJA. It would also provide valuable relief for small businesses by increasing the caps on businesses expensing and the reporting threshold for subcontract labor. Additionally, it will eliminate wasteful, fraud-ridden programs like the COVID-era employee retention tax credit.

Most recently, Rep. Smith has stood up for taxpayers by assailing the IRS’s costly, misguided Direct File Program. In 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which provided $15 million to fund a task force to study the feasibility of the IRS preparing returns for taxpayers. Rep. Smith rightly called out the Biden administration for selecting a left-of-center think tank called New America for the “independent” task force, pointing out that New America has a clear ideological conflict. Just two years prior to selection, “New America employees wrote favorably about Senator Warren’s Tax Simplification Act … Specifically, New America wrote ‘the government…can and should build this tool in the coming years.’”

Rep. Smith has been right on the money that Direct File, “is simply a way to expand the power of the IRS that no one asked for, especially considering Americans already have numerous options for filing free tax returns. From the beginning, the Biden Administration tipped the scales in favor of a direct file program that the American people did not want or need.”

For fighting the good fight to protect taxpayers against an out-of-control IRS, Rep. Smith is a Profile in Courage.