While Intuit did not lobby against Warren’s bill - presumably because the legislation had little chance of success - tax giant H&R Block did. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., offered a bill last year that would have actually allowed the government to start offering prefill tax returns. “We anticipate that governmental encroachment at both the federal and state levels may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future,” Intuit said in its latest corporate filings. Intuit has repeatedly warned investors about the prospect of government-prepared returns. The Free File Alliance include both Intuit and H&R Block.īut the legislation would also permanently bar the IRS from offering its own free alternative. It makes permanent a public-private partnership in which 13 private tax preparation companies - called the “Free File Alliance” - have offered free online tax filings to lower- and middle-income families. The bill, called the Free File Act of 2016, looks on the surface to be consumer-friendly. Among the 60 co-sponsors of the bipartisan bill: then congressman and now Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. H&R Block spent $3 million, also directing some of their efforts towards the bill. Intuit spent more than $2 million lobbying last year, much of it spent on legislation that would permanently bar the government from offering taxpayers prefilled returns.
After all, the government already gets earnings information from employers.īut as ProPublica has detailed again and again, Intuit - the makers of TurboTax - and H&R Block have lobbied for years to derail any move toward such a system. And it would not be particularly difficult to give U.S. It’s already like that in parts of Europe. You might not have to pay for an accountant, or fiddle for hours with complex software.
If it’s not, you fix it or ignore it altogether and prepare your return yourself. Here’s how preparing your taxes could work: You sit down, review a prefilled filing from the government.
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