Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America's Taxpayers

Summary

For nearly three decades, a cold war has raged through the halls of Congress and in high-end shellfish restaurants perched precariously on Washington, D.C.’s southern coast. The battle lines have shifted between successive administrations, sometimes tilting toward proletariat victory, and sometimes cutting fast toward total surrender to corporate America. This month, thanks to the whims of the president and hefty sums of cash, Donald Trump has amended an old axiom to guarantee that nothing in life is certain but death, and paying money to file your taxes. According to a report by the Associated Press this week, the IRS is moving to shut down its free tax filing program known as Direct File, with employees working on the program told to stall work on future iterations. The news comes after Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and the biggest player in tax preparation software, spent years tirelessly fighting any attempt by the government to bring the nightmarish American system of tax collection into line with European nations that have streamlined most citizens’ filing process down to the click of a button. More from Daniel Boguslaw Even when the Biden administration broke through in the Inflation Reduction Act to fund a pilot program for Direct File, which expanded to 25 states this tax season, Intuit didn’t stop fighting. Instead, it continued cajoling lawmakers and the White House into forcing millions of Americans to shell out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars to file with expensive and confusing tax prep software. A glance at Intuit’s 2025 first-quarter lobbying disclosures gets at this continued, quarter-century saga. The company shelled out $240,000 to lobby members of Congress on tax-related issues. Forty thousand dollars was doled out to Raffaniello & Associates to curry favor on issues like “Tax Administration & tax system integrity” and “Regulation of tax return preparers.” It also lobbied on implementation of Public Law 117-169, which is the statute tha...