I see this comment on every single article about taxation on reddit and HN, but can you be a bit more specific and identify what this lobbying does and actually point at some examples?
The intensity of industry opposition to CalFile has not gone unnoticed in Washington, D.C. In February, IRS commissioner Mark Everson told Congress that he was reluctant to set up an IRS direct e-file system in part because of the bruising battle he witnessed in California...And that leaves federal taxpayers with little prospect of a direct-to-government e-filing system anytime soon...In fact, the industry already ran Big Brother-themed ads in California when tax authorities there were setting up CalFile, a direct e-filing system for state taxes. Lenny Goldberg, the head of the California Tax Reform Association, says Intuit is leading the charge against direct e-filing.
https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t...
There is one program in America, however, that provides some taxpayers with completed tax returns. Since 2007, around 80,000 California taxpayers each year have paid state income taxes this way under a program called ReadyReturn.
ReadyReturn survived corporate lobbying for one reason: Joe Bankman decided to make easy tax filing his personal mission, and he spent $30,000 to hire a lobbyist to counter lobbying by Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software.
but here's something more interesting:
Since 2015, the tax preparation industry has persuaded lawmakers to include a line in the annual appropriations bill that bars the IRS from offering pre-populated returns to taxpayers. The Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill approved by the Senate last month extends that ban another year.
The codification of Free File in the Taxpayer First Act and the extended ban on pre-populated returns in the appropriations bill are steps in precisely the wrong direction.
I would be happy if there was just a place to upload the form to online. No fancy software needed. I have to mail my Quarterly 941 every quarter or pay some overpriced software to do it - https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-941
I think the popular counter argument is worth knowing. The TurboTaxes of the world argue that if the Government just sent you a pre-filled out form they could mess up many of them & you would possibly overpay if you didn't do your due diligence. This tends to get support from those who like to argue in favor of ideas such as "smaller govt" & "govt is inefficient compared to businesses where the capitalism market will pick the winners". Obviously both of these ideas are highly controversial.
Propublica is the definitive outlet for reporting on this stuff. They've spent years digging into bills and the millions that Intuit and H&R block spend lobbying around tax reform.
> “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support.[0]
Also of note was how after they conceded to making a government-mandated (bad, hamstrung) free filing software alternative for those making below $39k, Intuit blocked it from Google with robots.txt: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-hid...
...Which is important because if you start from anywhere else on their site, they'll begin hurling upsell dark patterns at the user, despite proclaiming "free" in copy in many places.
Right now, if I google "file taxes for free usa," the page "TurboTax Free Edition"[1] ranks higher – which is not the same software. And, of course, they do not link to the actual FreeFile page from there.[2]
Edit: turns out that Intuit will no longer be offering that government-sponsored Free File alternative after this year (disclosed in a blog post titled "Accelerating Technology Innovation," hah)[3]. Good riddance. The US Treasury Inspector General found that only 2.4% of taxpayers (2.5 million) actually used the free file software, whereas 5.5x that number could have filed for free, but were likely charged for it instead:
> TIGTA estimates that more than 14 million taxpayers met the Free File Program criteria and may have paid a fee to e-file their Federal tax return in the 2019 Filing Season.[4]
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/521132960