The IRS wants to rewrite its complicated letters to taxpayers and speak to people in plain English.
The federal tax collector is rewriting and sending out commonly received notices ahead of the 2024 tax filing season as part of its new “Simple Notice Initiative.”
“Redesigned notices will be shorter, clearer and easier to understand,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on a Tuesday call with reporters to preview the initiative. “Taxpayers will see the difference when they open the mail and when they log into their online accounts.”
The 2024 tax season begins on January 29.
It is so ass backwards that they functionally require(d) an intermediary to file online. It would be so much easier to just have a literal email address (or webpage) where you could send your taxes. Too bad the vast majority of our politicians serve business interests (money) and not the American people.
And just to pour it on. Remember that Intuit had a PowerPoint presentation that leaked that indicated the number of challenges they have faced with Congress and the IRS repeatedly trying to create a return-free system. One of the slides from that PowerPoint.
It’s amazing to think how much energy and money Intuit has spent to prevent simple taxes for the American public. Like it’s been a thing they’ve been doing since the early 90s. They have gone to great lengths to deny people the ability to just click a button on the IRS website and call it done. The fact that we are actually getting Direct File is in itself an amazing accomplishment considering the massive amount of energy the tax preparation industry has tossed at ensuring this one thing, DID NOT HAPPEN.
Like if anyone actually sits and reads the history of Intuit and the US tax system, it’s just some amazing, I cannot believe this happened IRL. Just the sheer knowing how evil they are and how they didn’t care because it could affect their bottom line. They knew that they were falsely steering people into their paid product out of the Free File program and they didn’t need to that to them. There were internal memos that were published where they admitted, “this is not in the spirit of the program” but failed to change course because “doing so would have significant impact of delivery of product to paying customers.”
And the sheer level of money, people, energy, lobbying, etc they were throwing stopping all of this from happening. It’s incredible. And yet, we’re finally getting a pilot program to do some basic things directly with the Government. How Congress managed the squeak it out is a testament to how so many people wanted to indicate that Democrats did nothing with the two years they were given, and just this one thing was monumental and it’s barely anything.
Because the people pushing back to prevent it, the term deep pockets, doesn’t even begin to explain it. Like I never thought we would ever get a program like this. Yes, it’s massively crippled BUT IT’S SOMETHING. It’s just wild that this exists this year, I cannot even think of good words to describe how impossible this felt not but five years ago.