Elizabeth Warren on her proposal to bring back IRS Direct File: ‘For just one day of bombing Iran, we could pay for 20 years’
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has long been a vocal opponent of privatizing the tax filing system—i.e., how things are now. When ProPublica completed an investigation in 2019 showing major tax giants like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block intentionally deterred people from accessing free filing from its sites, she and other senators called for the private tax preparers to issue refunds to taxpayers they tricked into paying for the otherwise free filing they were eligible for.
Warren grilled H&R Block and Intuit on their lobbying efforts when the two left the Free File Alliance in 2020 and 2021, respectively. She grilled them again in 2023 and in 2024 on their lobbying efforts and on their alleged loose data collection methods. She did so again in 2025 when their successful lobbying led to the death knell of the IRS’s Direct File service, and as early as this morning, on social media, ahead of her introduction of the Direct File Act.
Over two decades, Intuit and H&R Block alone spent over $103 million in federal lobbying efforts to stop IRS modernization and proposed bills that would prefill taxpayers’ returns. The senator shared her remarks with Fortune ahead of her introduction of the Direct File Act, an effort to bring back the IRS’s short-lived but highly popular free tax filing service.
“To Republicans who say that making filing your taxes for free with the IRS is too expensive: For just one day of bombing Iran, we could pay for 20 years of Direct File.”
She pointed to lobbying by these two companies specifically as why the Direct File came and went.
“For years, giant tax prep companies like TurboTax and H&R Block have rigged our system so they can cash in on your hard-earned dollars,” Warren’s prepared remarks say. “It’s amazing that anyone could oppose this—especially when filing your taxes is something that Americans are required by law to do each year.”
There are two different kinds of free filing services the IRS has offered in the past. One is the Free File portal, launched in 2003 through a private-public partnership (dubbed the Free File Alliance) between the IRS and private tax preparers like H&R Block and Intuit. That is still around today: Anyone making $89,000 or less in 2025 can use the service to file their taxes for today’s deadline.
Separately, there’s Direct File, a short-lived but highly rated program that lasted for only two years. Following ProPublica’s reporting on the issue, the IRS ran a feasibility study to see how easy it would be to create an in-house direct filing program. With the results positive, the agency created a pilot program in 2024, reaching over 140,000 people in 12 states. A survey later conducted by the Treasury found that those filers claimed more than $90 million in refunds and avoided about $5.6 million in filing fees they otherwise would have paid to private providers, and roughly 90% of users rated the experience favorably.
The following year, the IRS said the pilot would be permanent and would expand to 25 states, ultimately resulting in roughly 296,000 filers. This is when lobbying from H&R Block and Intuit intensified: The two companies alone spent over $20 million since 2023, according to OpenSecrets, and combined, spent a record high of $7.1 million last year alone.
“The Direct File pilot project was a huge success, so why was it dropped?
“Tax prep companies hated it because it hurt their bottom line. Why would you pay for TurboTax if you could easily file your taxes for free? That’s why for years, big tax prep companies have lobbied the government to keep people from using a program like Direct File,” Warren’s remarks say.
“This story tells you all you need to know about why Republicans will block my bill today. This is all about money and power. It’s about letting big corporations donate to politicians, and then politicians letting those companies rip off American families.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com