When the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived at the Internal Revenue Service earlier this year, leaders of the group reassured workers that the agency’s free tax filing tool, Direct File, would be spared from cuts. But only a few days after meeting with tax software lobbyists, the beloved tool was placed on the chopping block….
The plans to potentially kill Direct File, the free tax filing tool developed by the IRS which services 25 states, was initiated by Sam Corcos, CEO of an Andreessen Horowitz–backed health startup that has ties to SpaceX.
Corcos told multiple sources that he had met with Free File Inc. (previously the Free File Alliance), a group of tax preparation software companies that partner with the IRS to offer free online tax filing services. The group was organized by Intuit, which produces TurboTax, more than 20 years ago as a means of offering free filing services to lower-income taxpayers. In return, the IRS promised not to create its own government-run online filing system.
Before Inauguration Day in January and well into the following month, DOGE leadership, including Steve Davis, CEO and president of Elon Musk’s Boring Company, and Amy Gleason, acting administrator for the US DOGE Service, said they were impressed with the Direct File project and reassured the engineering team working on it that it was safe, multiple sources tell WIRED.
Corcos has been one of DOGE’s primary decisionmakers at the IRS, multiple sources at the agency tell WIRED. In April, he led a three-day workshop with a number of representatives from Palantir to build a new “mega API” for accessing all internal IRS records. At the time, sources said the IRS was testing whether to use Palantir’s Foundry software as a central reading center for all IRS systems.
Lambert here: Not agreement-capable.
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