> the push towards automated tax collection strikes at the heart of their games
I don't think that's even it. The goal is to make taxes seem scary and complicated to the public, to build a consensus that taxes should be eliminated or simplified - which inevitably plays out in ways which will largely, if not entirely, benefit the wealthy. And in this light, the reason the wealthy are opposed to Direct File is obvious: having it available reduces the pain that people (and particularly the working class) will feel from having to file taxes, making it harder to drum up popular support for "reform".
Tax fraud is just top of mind because the other day I had to endure a smug rich asshole brag about it over dinner and I wasn't in a position to push back, so I'm venting a bit.
These are related: the rich backers of right-wing media have for decades pushed the idea that taxes are this scary, hard process where one mistake can ruin your life. That is not, and has never been, true (the average person audited by the IRS roughly breaks even because they usually weren’t claiming every possible deduction) but it’s in their interest to promote that belief because it supports lowering the rates they pay and the consequences people suffer for cheating (rich people do this in much larger amounts because most of us don’t have the flexibility to engage in creative accounting or enough inventive to do so).
Intuit wants everyone to think it’s so scary that you need to pay them, and the company is run by rich people who would want to pay less in taxes no matter what industry they’re in.
The combination is how you get people arguing for their boss to get a tax cut even if they personally will pay more, because as long as the IRS is a fabled bogeyman they have been told that’s the price of freedom. It took the better part of the 20th century and billions of dollars in funding to teach the point where enough people believed it, but they were patient.
(Direct File doesn't directly affect them, but the push towards automated tax collection strikes at the heart of their games.)