The US government has one of the most complex tax systems in the world. Citizens must calculate what they owe to the government—overpay or underpay, and you’re in trouble. The Trump Administration recently eliminated Direct File, the only option to file taxes directly with the IRS, and now merely paying taxes comes at a price.
Direct File has been in operation for only two years, but it was the last option for Americans to file directly with the IRS without a fee. The current administration claimed that the program was costly and underutilized. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the private sector “can do a better job” than the federal government, and while that is namely true, the government should not be charging civilians for submitting their annual dues.
The government has partnered with a number of private commercial organizations to permit people earning under a certain threshold to file their taxes without a fee. The same government that is concerned that people cannot acquire ID to vote believes that everyone is competent enough to prepare and file ever-changing state and federal tax forms with a private company.
The tax code complexity requires advanced training to decipher. The code is deliberately confusing. “In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words. Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year. This must be simplified,” DOGE wrote on X in November 2024, when there were calls for simplifying the tax code.
Taxation is indeed a much broader issue than merely federal. State and local governments have been raising taxes at an unseen pace. The cost of government, as measured by total revenues as a percent of the total GDP, is a key factor in determining our quality of life, and as we have seen, our quality of life has been drastically reduced as government spending rises. The people cannot possibly be expected to foot this endless bill. The Founding Fathers of the United States specifically prohibited direct taxation, such as any form of an income tax.
There are infinite loopholes in the tax system, deliberately placed there in order to provide the IRS with free rein to extort the people. The majority of people who fail to file are low-income workers. In 2025, an estimated 13-15 million individuals or households will still not have filed their taxes. The voluntary rate for filing is around 85%, and the majority who do not file simply do not understand how to do so. The government measures the “tax gap” to determine the total amount of taxes that taxpayers should pay by law for a given period and the amount that is actually and voluntarily paid on time.
The bottom income bracket (the lowest 20%) has a tax noncompliance rate of 38%. These are the people who benefited from free tax filing services. Most would likely receive a rebate or incentive for filing, and some mistakenly believe they are benefiting by providing the government an interest-free loan on their earnings. The top 1% only accounts for around 9% of tax noncompliance orders, but those at the top 1% can afford to pay for creative taxation.
Direct File may not have been the ideal service, yet, there must be a method for Americans to easily file without the need for a middle man.