This Tax Day, Direct File Should Stay Dead

This Tax Day, more than 150 million American households will spend 6.5 billion hours preparing to send more than $5 trillion in taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Unsurprisingly, Uncle Sam has tried every trick in the book to extract even more money from hardworking Americans—including an invasive program called “Direct File” to file Americans’ taxes for them. Fortunately, President Trump killed this program, preempting mission creep by the IRS. But Senate Democrats will stop at nothing to bring the deeply-flawed program back, while media pundits push bizarre revisionism about Direct File. This Tax Day, the IRS should stick to processing returns and refunds and avoid reckless attempts to enter the tax filing business.

Throughout the entirety of Direct File’s history, the IRS acted with deliberate disregard toward taxpayers. The Inflation Reduction Act provided $15 million to study the feasibility of such a program, which the agency took as license to launch a pilot program with the help of a left-wing non-profit. The study estimated that Direct File would cost taxpayers anywhere from $64 million to $249 million annually, but according to reviews by the Government Accountability Office and Inspector General, the “IRS had no documentation to support the underlying data, analysis, or assumptions used for Direct File cost estimates.” The IRS, which is notorious for cost overruns, felt that it had no obligation to level with taxpayers about true program costs.

Despite these high and opaque costs, taxpayers got very little benefit from the program. In 2024, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance released findings from documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealing that the IRS downplayed significant negative taxpayer feedback on Direct File. Contrary to the agency’s public claims, TPA’s review of more than 450 pages of respondent-written comments uncovered serious taxpayer concerns, including sharing their personal data with third-party websites, frequent website crashes, lower refunds, and other technical difficulties. The IRS previously purported that 90 percent of users rated their experience as “excellent.” However, TPA’s analysis found that nearly 25 percent of respondents rated their experience negatively.

One user noted, “I only received [a] $3 [refund] this year while last year I received a little over $200. I don’t understand the discrepancy since my income and circumstances did not change significantly. Idk if there is an issue with the calculations. But that is a big difference.” Many users expressed privacy concerns. According to one program participant, identity verification was “a disgusting process and difficult to manage. I do not want to send my identification information through a private company to complete government forms.” Another summed it up as “weird, dystopian, and privacy invasive.”

The IRS couldn’t even get the site to function properly: “It crashed when I tried submitting my return, and then it lost the vast majority of my data. Chat was unable to assist in recovery. Where did my data go?” Users also reported difficulty uploading W-2 forms and navigating between pages.

The Direct File program was a costly flop that made filers feel unsettled while enriching government bureaucrats. This Tax Day, taxpayers should be glad it’s gone and oppose attempts to reintroduce this failed endeavor. Instead of grabbing even more power, the IRS should get back to the basics and ensure that Americans can file their taxes and receive their refunds with as little hassle as possible.