[danso]

It's not nothing. Until it got reported on, making the current status quo "codified into law" (instead of having to be revisited and revoted-on every few years) was very non-controversial. It was a small part of a tax reform bill that otherwise has broad bipartisan support. This was a bill written by Sen. Ron Wyden – and then defended in the New York Times by Wyden [0] – and usually, Wyden is seen as a stalwart champion for consumers (and Internet freedoms). The Free File provision was arguably the archetypal kind of law that lobbyists are able to get approved because people and lawmakers weren't paying attention.

In addition, it's not clear that the status quo of the IRS letting Intuit et al. administer the Free File program will continue. Preventing it being codified into law is just the most immediate step, but the controversy surrounding this issue – particularly the use of robots.txt/NOINDEX on the Free File pages -- has resulted in the NY state attorney launching its own investigation [1]. When the Free File Alliance agreement is up for renogiation in how ever many years (I think it's every 3 years?), there may be renewed interest in drastically changing the program.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/opinion/letters/taxes-con...

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-intuit-h-r...

edit: Here's the URL for the IRS agreement regarding the Free File Alliance. It originally began in 2002, had an original term of three years, and "options to renew for successive two-year periods". Other news articles say the next date is October 2020: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/2002-free-online-electronic-...