Doing Your Taxes Will Cost Even More if Congress Passes This Backward Bill

After the ball drops every New Year's, after the celebrations and perhaps a hangover, a strange sensation sets over the country. One of dread. It's the onsetting realization that tax season is upon us and all the time, money and stress that comes with it. To most people, the April 15 deadline to file is like a constantly sounding alarm and a constant burden until your check is in the mail. It's not a pleasurable exercise of our civic duty, partly because it's so expensive.

Most Americans pay for tax preparation in some form or another, even though the vast majority of us are eligible for a free online filing. So why do just 3% of us actually file for free? The answer is simple, Big Tax.

When the IRS began plans to offer a 100% online free filing service, multibillion-dollar tax preparing companies like TurboTax and H&R Block freaked out. They spent millions of dollars lobbying to derail the plan and it worked. The IRS said they would back away from their free filing option but only if they offered a free service themselves. They did, but they hid them so deep in their websites that no one can find them and American taxpayers — already pressed for cash — end up forking over billions of dollars a year for something they should be able to get for free.

Well, now it looks like Big Tax has finally gotten their way. A bipartisan committee in the House's Ways and Means Committee has passed the Taxpayer First Act. Don't let the name fool you, within the many provisions hides the insidious effort to make it illegal for the IRS to ever provide a free filing service.

That means consumers will lose out. If the bill passes, American taxpayers will forever lose the chance for an easy, non-confusing, less stressful way to pay Uncle Sam. Instead, H&R Block, TurboTax, and other for-profit tax preparation services will be far better positioned to force us to pay for what should be free.

The Taxpayer First Act is a misnomer, it doesn't put us first. What it does is assure that Big Tax will make billions off of us for years to come.

Tell Congress to really put the taxpayer first. Sign the petition and demand that they get rid of this foolish provision before moving the bill forward.
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