[clogston]

I never advocated banning anything. The argument is closer to "cheap, high calorie low nutrition food is leading to an obesity epidemic." Tax fraud costs taxpayers billions of dollars[0]. There are surely many ways to combat this, but the correlation between fraud and it being free to attempt fraud en masse is real.

The link you provided points to industry participants in the Free File Alliance[1]. Some skeptics believe the industry has this program to appease the government enough to not pursue tax software created by the government. If you're one of the folks who believe we should have a more european-style system, participating in FFA probably works against that goal (I don't know that that's your stance just throwing it out there for others to consider)

I think it's also interesting from a business case study. I tried to make the argument that tax software isn't cheap to produce. What's the right way for competition to blossom if the cost to users is "free" and the revenue is made up via other less than savory means? Does small-guy competition have to resort to the same tactics?

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonardburman/2012/05/28/billion...

[1] http://freefilealliance.org/