In a post on X, unelected government official Elon Musk revealed that he has cut the staff of the Internal Revenue Service that oversaw the system that allows Americans to file their taxes for free easily on its website.A right-wing MAGA influencer called the "direct file" tax program a "far left go...

Summary

Elon Musk claimed on X that he eliminated the IRS team responsible for the “Direct File” program, which allows Americans to file taxes online for free.

His statement was in response to a right-wing MAGA influencer who called the “direct file” tax program a “far-left government-wide computer office” built by Elizabeth Warren.

Thus far, the website remains active.

    • socialmedia@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 hours ago

      Write your tax return by hand and mail it in. The IRS downsized years ago and got rid of the people who read these things. They will try to OCR it and have a computer review it, but if there are issues then surely a human will need to look at it.

      Would be a shame if everyone filed taxes in a way that was terribly inconvenient for them.

    • spongebue@lemmy.world
      7·
      11 hours ago

      In theory, that could be the goal. Cripple the government by choking revenue.

      In practice, this is not what most people use to file taxes, particularly those who pay substantial amounts. More importantly, those taxes are mostly paid through paycheck withholdings. Most people get tax refunds by filing, or if they came up short through the year they only pay a small amount through this system.

      • Zink@programming.dev
        1·
        2 hours ago

        So it happens to create a backdoor regressive tax via over payments and refundable credits that go unclaimed?

        Sounds about right when the cruelty is the point.