The Internal Revenue Service has received $15 million as part of the Inflation Reduction Act to help Americans e-file easier.
Any American who makes less than $69,000 a year can legally file their taxes for free. Unfortunately, tax preparation companies often make it difficult for users to find the free option in an effort to push them toward paid options. Lawmakers have taken Intuit to task for such behavior in the past, but the latest funding should help put the IRS on more even terms.
According to The Washington Post, the IRS will spend the funding studying the best way to roll out an e-file platform for users to be able to file their taxes for free without relying on tax prep companies.
“The IRS is completely beholden to the software companies at this point because it just doesn’t have anything to replace them,” Nina Olson, who served for nearly two decades as the national taxpayer advocate, the IRS’s internal consumer rights watchdog, told the Post.
If the IRS is successful, it could revolutionize how Americans pay their taxes, streamlining the process and making it easier and cheaper.