

Filing taxes can be a major pain, especially with many services charging hundreds of dollars. You might be wondering why the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t just make their own program to help, but it’s complicated. In 2002, the IRS made an agreement with tax software companies — like H&R Block and TurboTax — known as the Free File Program . This agreement let Americans making under $66,000 per year access tax software companies’ systems for free. However, the IRS agreed to not make its own competing software. A controversial provision to the Taxpayer First Act would’ve made that agreement permanent by making it illegal for the IRS to develop their own software . Now, it seems that won’t be a part of the bill, according to Gizmodo . It’s not hard to see why the tax industry would want to ban the IRS from creating its own free, online system. Nobody is going to dish out hundreds of dollars to a third-party if you can file directly through the government. Although this decision...