Policy 03: IRS to automate income tax filing.

Researched: 2026-07-22. Status: draft.

The plank

The process of requiring Americans to file their taxes exists because Intuit, H&R Block, and the accounting industry lobbied for it. Our time and money is being stolen.

README.md and app/templates/index.html agree verbatim on this plank — no drift. (Unrelated bug noted in passing: Policy 4's heading does drift between the two files — "Disintermediate" vs. "Separate" — flag for whoever researches that plank.)

One honesty note on the plank's own wording: filing requirements predate Intuit — the villain claim is precise for the last 25 years (the industry lobbied to keep filing painful and to block government-run alternatives, documented below), not for the 1913 origin of the 1040. In conversation, say "kept it this way," not "invented it."

The problem

Americans do a job the government could largely do for them, and pay twice for the privilege — once in time, once in fees.

• Per-person burden: The IRS's own estimate, printed in the Form 1040 instructions, is that the average individual filer spends 13 hours and $290 in out-of-pocket costs per return (tax year 2024; via NTU Foundation's 2025 analysis of IRS figures). Nonbusiness filers (71% of returns) average 8 hours and $160; filers with business income (29%) average 24 hours and $620 for TY2024, easing to 21 hours and $610 for TY2025 (NTU Foundation, Feb 2026, Table 2, compiled from the IRS taxpayer burden model). The TY2025 all-filer figure is 12 hours and $290.
• Aggregate burden: Tax Foundation, working from IRS/OMB paperwork-burden data, computes 7.9 billion hours of compliance time and $133.3 billion in out-of-pocket costs for 2024 — roughly $546 billion per year total when time is valued at market wages (Tax Foundation, 2024). NTU Foundation's comparable 2025 estimate is 7.1 billion hours and $464 billion. These are model estimates and the two organizations use different scopes — but both are derived from the government's own burden filings, and both exceed $400 billion/year.
• Scope warning — do not quote the aggregate as an income-tax figure. The 7.1bn/$464bn and 7.9bn/$546bn totals cover all federal tax compliance, including corporate and business returns. The figure for individual income tax filing alone — the actual subject of this plank — is 2.129 billion hours and $143.79 billion (NTU Foundation, Feb 2026, Table 1), cross-confirmed by Tax Foundation's 2.249 billion individual-return hours for the prior vintage. Using the all-compliance number for this plank overstates the relevant burden by ~3.4× and is the single error a hostile reporter is most likely to find. See april/docs/math-lifetime-cost.md §0.2.
• The "free" system fails the people it was built for: GAO found that about 70% of taxpayers were eligible for IRS Free File but fewer than 3% used it (GAO-22-105236, 2022). The gap is not an accident; see the villain section.
• How it shows up in ordinary life: a W-2 employee whose employer already reported her wages to the IRS, and whose bank already reported her interest, must either spend a weekend re-typing numbers the IRS already has, or pay TurboTax/H&R Block/a storefront preparer to do the re-typing. In 2022, all 50 state attorneys general concluded Intuit had steered roughly 4.4 million low-income customers who qualified for free filing into paid products between 2016 and 2018 ($141M multistate settlement, May 2022).
• Money left on the table: the IRS's long-standing estimate is that about 1 in 5 EITC-eligible workers fails to claim the credit (IRS EITC participation estimates; secondary, not re-verified this pass). Automated or pre-populated filing is the standard remedy proposed in the literature.

Who profits from the status quo

This section is factual and sourced; every figure below is public record (SEC filings, lobbying disclosures compiled by OpenSecrets, court settlements, government reports).

• Intuit (TurboTax). Consumer Group revenue $4.4 billion in fiscal 2024 (Intuit FY2024 results, Aug 2024).
• H&R Block. Total revenue $3.6 billion in fiscal 2024 (H&R Block FY24 results, Aug 2024).
• Lobbying spend (OpenSecrets, from federal lobbying disclosures):
• Combined Intuit + H&R Block federal lobbying: ~$103 million since 2003; over $20 million since 2023; a combined record $7.1 million in 2025 — the year Direct File was killed (OpenSecrets, April 2026; Fortune, April 2026).
• Intuit alone set a company record of ~$3.8 million in 2023; H&R Block spent over $3 million in 2023 (OpenSecrets, Feb 2024; OpenSecrets, Sept 2023).
• The Free File bargain (2002–2019): under the Free File Alliance memorandum of understanding, the industry offered "free" filing to lower-income taxpayers and, in exchange, the IRS agreed not to build its own filing software — a government promise not to compete, held in place for 17 years. ProPublica's 2019 "TurboTax Trap" series showed Intuit (and four other Alliance members) added noindex,nofollow code to hide their genuinely-free pages from search engines while advertising paid products as "free" (ProPublica series, 2019; IRS-funded MITRE review confirming the hiding, 2019). The non-compete clause was removed in a December 2019 addendum; H&R Block quit the Alliance in 2020 and Intuit in 2021.
• Legal consequences: the $141 million 50-state settlement (May 2022) over deceptive "free" marketing; an FTC final order (January 2024) finding Intuit's "free" advertising deceptive (Fortune, Jan 2024). Caveat we must carry honestly: the Fifth Circuit reportedly vacated and remanded the FTC order in March 2026 (reported in a legal summary; unverified — check before publishing). The state settlement is unaffected.
• California precedent: when Stanford tax professor Joe Bankman helped the state pilot ReadyReturn (2005) — pre-filled state returns — Intuit spent over $1 million lobbying in Sacramento and gave $2.12 million to 120 California politicians (2005–2010) to kill it (Priceonomics/LA Times account; NPR Planet Money "Tax Hero," 2017). Bankman personally spent ~$30,000 hiring a lobbyist to defend it. ReadyReturn survived only in reduced form (CalFile), used by roughly 80,000 Californians a year.
• The kill itself: the Trump administration announced the end of Direct File in April 2025, cut its staff ~80%, halted development in mid-March 2025, and the IRS told states on November 3, 2025 that Direct File "will not be available" for the 2026 season (Marketplace, Nov 2025; Nextgov/FCW, Nov 2025). Users were redirected to "Free File" — software supplied by the same industry (Public Citizen, 2025).

The proposal, concretely

Three stages, each already proven somewhere:

1. Restore and codify Direct File (statute, not agency discretion). The vehicle exists: the Direct File Act of 2026 (Sen. Warren / Rep. Sherman, 160+ cosponsors, introduced March 2026) directs the IRS to establish and operate a free online preparation and e-filing program (Warren press release, March 2026). This reverses the November 2025 suspension and supersedes the OBBBA §70607 "replacement" track (P.L. 119-21, which appropriated $15 million to study a public-private replacement).
2. Pre-populate. The IRS already receives W-2s, 1099s, 1098s, and 1095s. Stage two loads them into Direct File so the taxpayer reviews and confirms rather than re-types — Goolsbee's 2006 "Simple Return" design (Brookings, 2006). Treasury's own economists showed 66–75 million returns (42–48% of all returns) could be pre-populated accurately today using only current-year information returns plus the prior-year return (Goodman, Lim, Sacerdote & Whitten, NBER w30008, 2022; published National Tax Journal, 2023).
3. Return-free for the simplest cases. For taxpayers whose entire income is third-party-reported, the confirmed pre-populated return is the filing — the model used, in some form, in roughly 36 countries (Tax Policy Center briefing book): Sweden and other Nordics send a completed draft that can be approved by text message; Spain's Renta Web presents a full pre-drafted return; Estonia's filing famously takes minutes; Japan handles most employees through employer year-end adjustment (nenmatsu chōsei) so they never file at all.

Supporting plumbing: keep information-return deadlines early (W-2s are already due January 31), expand e-filing mandates for payers, and preserve paid preparers and self-filing for anyone who wants them — every serious version of this proposal, from Goolsbee to Direct File, is opt-in.

Evidence

• Direct File pilot, 2024 (12 states): 140,803 accepted returns against a 100,000 goal; $90M in refunds claimed; ~$5.6M in preparation fees saved; the IRS after-action survey found 90%+ of users rated the experience Excellent or Above Average (IRS pilot closeout, April 2024; IRS Pub. 5969 after-action report, 2024). The 94%-positive figure widely quoted (e.g., by Sen. Warren) comes from the same survey family.
• Direct File, 2025 (25 states): 296,531 accepted returns, with 30+ million taxpayers eligible (TIGTA, "Direct File Activity for the 2025 Filing Season," March 2026). Actual FY2025 cost was $16 million versus the IRS's $61.2 million estimate — the watchdog found the IRS over-estimated by $45 million (FedScoop, 2026); note TIGTA also found some support-function costs (≈$8.8M of detailee and authentication costs in the pilot year) were excluded from IRS totals, so treat all cost figures as ±.
• Goolsbee, "The Simple Return" (Brookings, 2006): up to 40% of taxpayers could receive pre-filled returns, saving ~225 million hours and >$2 billion/year in prep fees; ~$44 billion of burden reduction over ten years for the eligible group.
• Goodman, Lim, Sacerdote & Whitten (NBER 2022 / NTJ 2023): nationally representative simulation on TY2019 returns; 42–48% pre-populatable accurately; accuracy falls with income and with number of dependents. This is the best evidence for stage 2 and the honest bound against overpromising stage 3.
• California ReadyReturn (2005–): pilot users overwhelmingly approved (satisfaction ~98% in state survey — commonly cited, not independently re-verified); the program was throttled by lobbying, not by user experience (Priceonomics).
• International: ~36 countries operate return-free or pre-populated systems for at least some taxpayers (Tax Policy Center); by 2020 roughly three-quarters of OECD members pre-filled returns with at least some income data (TPC briefing book).

Strength of evidence: moderate-to-strong. Strong that automation works technically and that users love it (two US filing seasons, one state program, dozens of countries). Moderate on the aggregate dollar savings (model-based). The weakest link is not evidence but durability: the US version was killed by politics twice (ReadyReturn, Direct File), which is itself evidence for the plank's villain claim.

Who wins, who loses

Compensation mechanism: none proposed. Be honest about this: the plank offers tax-prep workers nothing. The mitigation is pace — scope grows over years, attrition in a seasonal workforce is high, and preparers can migrate up-market — but that is mitigation, not compensation. Historical analogy: e-filing killed the typewriter-and-carbon-paper return industry without a compensation program either.

Fiscal impact

No CBO or JCT score of the Direct File Act exists as of this writing; everything below is agency-reported cost data plus labeled back-of-envelope.

• Government cost: IRS's May 2023 report to Congress (required by IRA §10301) estimated a mature Direct File at $64M/year (5M users, narrow scope) to $249M/year (25M users, broad scope) (CRS IF12654; GAO-24-107236). Actuals ran below estimates: $24.6M for the whole pilot through FS2024 (IRS-reported; TIGTA says add ~$8.8M of excluded costs), $16M in FY2025 (TIGTA, March 2026). Even the high estimate is ~0.004% of federal outlays.
• Per-return economics: critics correctly note ~$54–$138 per 2025 return depending on whose cost total you use (NTU Foundation computes $138 using a $41M cumulative figure). At 25M users the IRS's own numbers imply ~$10/return — cheaper than the ~$90/return the IRS pays nothing for but taxpayers pay privately. Software has fixed costs; the per-unit argument cuts against the program only while it is kept small — which is what the lobbying accomplished.
• Revenue effects: genuinely uncertain. Pre-population of third-party-reported income shouldn't change evasion much (that income is already matched). Higher EITC/CTC take-up is a real federal outlay increase — on the order of $10B+/year if the unclaimed-credit estimates are right (back-of-envelope; this is money Congress already voted to spend, reaching the people it was voted for). A platform being honest about fiscal cost must count this.
• Net: direct budget cost is small (low hundreds of millions/year, partially offset by IRS processing savings from cleaner e-filed returns — unquantified); the headline benefit — hundreds of dollars and half a workday per household per year — is private savings, not deficit reduction. The plank's "money being stolen" claim is about the $464–546B/year compliance burden, and automation addresses only the simple-filer slice of it. Say so.

The opposition's best case

1. "The tax collector shouldn't also be the tax preparer" — Grover Norquist / Americans for Tax Reform (coalition letter to Congress, March 2023; The Hill): the IRS has a vested interest in maximizing collections, so letting it compute your bill creates a conflict of interest. Response: the IRS already computes your liability — that's what document-matching and CP2000 notices are. The question is whether the taxpayer sees the computation before or after filing. Every proposal on the table is opt-in with full taxpayer review, and 36 countries run this without tax authorities systematically overcharging. Concession: the argument has real force in a low-trust environment, and it's why the design must stay opt-in with independent (TIGTA/GAO) audit of the pre-population logic — a mandatory government-computed bill would deserve this objection.
2. "Low uptake, high cost" — Treasury's own Report on the Replacement of Direct File (Oct 2, 2025, released Nov 5; required by OBBBA §70607) and NTU Foundation: ~296K users of 30M+ eligible (~1%) at up to $138/return doesn't justify a government program when private free options exist. Response: the program was two filing seasons old, barred from serious marketing, and its costs came in $45M under estimate (TIGTA 2026); Free File — the 20-year-old alternative — plateaued below 3% uptake of a 70%-eligible population (GAO 2022), so "low uptake" condemns the incumbent more than the pilot. Concession: uptake was genuinely modest, and the burden of proof for scaling was real; killing it in year two guaranteed we'll never see the mature-scale numbers.
3. "Pre-population fails exactly where the stakes are highest" — Goodman/Lim/Sacerdote/Whitten (NBER 2022) and the Progressive Policy Institute (2020): most returns (52–58%) can't be accurately pre-filled; accuracy is worst for filers with dependents, and EITC eligibility (residency of children) isn't observable from information returns — so automation could misdeliver the very credits it promises. Because the US runs social policy through the tax code, return-free filing can't work here without code simplification. Response: this is an argument for the hybrid design (pre-populate + confirm), not against automation; nobody proposes silently auto-filing EITC claims. Concession: largely correct. Full return-free filing for all Americans requires simplifying the code, and this plank should be described as automating the simple half of returns, not "the IRS does everyone's taxes."
4. "Government shouldn't duplicate what the private sector gives away" — Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) and industry (statement on suspension of Direct File): Free File and commercial free tiers already serve simple filers at zero cost to government. Response: the private "free" offering is the one a 50-state investigation found was deliberately hidden from search engines and deceptively upsold (4.4M customers, $141M settlement, 2022; FTC deception finding, 2024). A public option is the discipline that makes "free" mean free. Concession: the FTC's order was reportedly vacated by the Fifth Circuit in March 2026 (verify), and post-2019 commercial free tiers are genuinely more available than in the Free File Alliance era.
5. "The IRS can't build software" — general IT-execution skepticism (GAO flagged incomplete cost accounting: GAO-24-107236). Response: Direct File is the counterexample — shipped on time, 90%+ satisfaction, costs under estimate — arguably the best-reviewed piece of consumer software the federal government has produced. Concession: the IRS's broader modernization record is poor, and the pilot leaned on outside talent (USDS/GSA detailees) whose costs were under-reported and whose availability isn't guaranteed.

Talking points

• One line: The IRS already has your W-2 — it should fill in your return and let you hit "confirm," like taxpayers in 36 other countries, instead of you paying TurboTax to retype it.
• Thirty seconds: The average American spends 13 hours and about $290 a year filing taxes the IRS could mostly pre-fill — it already receives your W-2s and 1099s. The IRS built exactly that: Direct File. Real people used it — 140,000 in 2024, nearly 300,000 in 2025 — and over 90% rated it excellent. Then it was shut down in November 2025. Restore it, write it into law, and pre-fill the return for the roughly 70 million filers whose returns the government can already complete accurately.
• Two minutes: adds the villain and the honest costs. Intuit and H&R Block — $8 billion a year in combined tax-prep-related revenue — have spent about $103 million lobbying Washington since 2003, hit a record $7.1 million in 2025, the year Direct File died, and previously spent millions in Sacramento to kill California's pre-filled return. For 17 years the IRS was contractually barred from building filing software under a deal with these same companies, who a 50-state investigation caught hiding their free product from Google and upselling 4.4 million low-income filers — a $141 million settlement. The fix is opt-in: pre-filled returns for simple filers, paper or preparer for anyone who prefers. Honest costs: it's roughly $64–250 million a year of IRS budget at scale; tax-prep workers — tens of thousands of seasonal jobs — lose, with no compensation beyond a gradual phase-in; and complex returns (about half) can't be pre-filled until the code itself is simplified. Treasury's own economists say 42–48% of returns could be pre-filled accurately today. That's a hundred million weekends given back.
• (Every figure above traces to the sourced claims in the sections preceding; the $23B/year full-scale savings figure is an advocacy estimate — use "billions per year" unless pressed, then attribute to the Economic Security Project via Sen. Warren's office.)

Open questions

• Exact TIGTA cost accounting: reconcile $16M (FY2025 actual), $24.6M (pilot cumulative), $41M (NTU's cumulative), and the $8.8M excluded costs into one defensible number before the ebook. Read the TIGTA March 2026 report directly (fetch was blocked this pass).
• FTC v. Intuit, Fifth Circuit (March 2026): confirm the vacatur and its grounds; adjust talking points if the deception finding is dead law.
• The $23B/year savings estimate: obtain and check the underlying Economic Security Project methodology (fees + time + unclaimed credits); we currently cite it only through Warren's office and OpenSecrets, which even disagree on annual-vs-decade framing.
• Tax-prep employment: get a real BLS/10-K number for seasonal preparer jobs at risk — the losers row is the least-quantified part of this doc.
• EITC misdelivery risk: what error rate did Direct File's credit flows actually show vs. paid preparers? (Paid-preparer EITC error rates are historically high — if Direct File beats them, argument 3 partially inverts. Find data.)
• What an economist should check first: the Goodman et al. 42–48% accuracy bound — it is load-bearing for the whole "concretely" section — and whether the $64–249M IRS scale-cost estimate survives the pilot actuals.

Sources

1. IRS, "Direct File pilot officially closes... 140,803 taxpayers," April 2024. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/direct-file-pilot-officially-closes-after-more-than-140000-taxpayers-successfully-use-direct-e-filing-system-in-12-states-including-integration-with-4-state-tax-systems — primary.
2. IRS, Pub. 5969, "Direct File Pilot Program: Filing Season 2024 After Action Report," 2024. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5969.pdf — primary.
3. TIGTA, "Direct File Activity for the 2025 Filing Season," March 2026. https://www.tigta.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2026-03/2026408006fr.pdf — primary (report itself not fetched this pass; figures via FedScoop/Accounting Today coverage).
4. GAO-22-105236, "IRS Free File Program: IRS Should Develop Additional Options," 2022. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105236 — primary.
5. GAO-24-107236, "IRS Direct File: Actions Needed during Pilot to Improve Information on Costs and Benefits," 2024. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107236 — primary.
6. CRS IF12654, "IRS Direct File Program: An Overview" (incl. May 2023 IRS Report to Congress cost range $64M–$249M/yr). https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12654 — primary.
7. Treasury, "Report on the Replacement of Direct File," Oct 2, 2025 (released Nov 5, 2025; required by OBBBA P.L. 119-21 §70607, $15M appropriation). https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/Report-Replacement-of-Direct-File-2025.pdf — primary (fetch blocked this pass; contents via Tax Notes/Federal News Network coverage).
8. Goolsbee, Austan, "The Simple Return: Reducing America's Tax Burden Through Return-Free Filing," Brookings Institution, 2006. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/200607goolsbee_pb.pdf — primary (academic).
9. Goodman, Lim, Sacerdote & Whitten, "Automatic Tax Filing: Simulating a Pre-Populated Form 1040," NBER Working Paper 30008, 2022 (published National Tax Journal 76:4, 2023). https://www.nber.org/papers/w30008 — primary (academic).
10. Tax Foundation, "Tax Compliance Costs the US Economy $546B Annually," 2024. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/irs-tax-compliance-costs/ — secondary (built on IRS/OMB data).
11. NTU Foundation, "Taxpayers Will Spend 7.1 Billion Hours, $464 Billion on Tax Compliance in 2025" (13 hrs / $290 per filer). https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/taxpayers-will-spend-71-billion-hours-464-billion-on-tax-compliance-in-2025 — secondary (built on IRS data; NTU opposes Direct File, which strengthens the burden citation).
12. OpenSecrets, "Intuit and H&R Block set lobbying records the year Direct File died," April 2026 ($103M since 2003; $7.1M in 2025). https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/04/intuit-and-hr-block-set-lobbying-records-the-year-direct-file-died — secondary (built on federal lobbying disclosures).
13. OpenSecrets, "TurboTax maker Intuit spent millions in record lobbying blitz," Feb 2024. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/02/turbotax-maker-intuit-spent-millions-in-record-lobbying-blitz-amid-threats-to-tax-prep-industry/ — secondary.
14. ProPublica, "The TurboTax Trap" series, 2019–2022. https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap — secondary (investigative; sparked the state and FTC actions).
15. Axios, "Intuit agrees to pay $141 million to settle deception claim," May 2022. https://www.axios.com/2022/05/04/intuit-turbotax-141-million-dupe-claim — secondary (settlement is public record).
16. Fortune, "After FTC and TurboTax spar over definition of 'free'..." Jan 2024 (FTC final order). https://fortune.com/2024/01/23/ftc-turbotax-free-filing-products-false-advertising-irs/ — secondary. Fifth Circuit vacatur of the order, March 2026 — unverified, seen only in a DC OAG amicus/legal-summary snippet; confirm.
17. Tax Policy Center Briefing Book, "What is return-free filing and how would it work?" (36 countries) and "What are prepopulated tax returns?" https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-it-return-free-tax-filing-and-how-would-it-work — secondary.
18. Priceonomics, "The Stanford Professor Who Fought the Tax Lobby" (ReadyReturn/Bankman; CA lobbying figures attributed to LA Times). https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/ — secondary; CA dollar figures should be re-verified against LA Times originals before "reviewed" status.
19. NPR Planet Money, Episode 760 "Tax Hero," 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero — secondary.
20. The Hill, "Conservative coalition takes aim at Biden's IRS-run tax preparation service," 2023 (ATR/Norquist coalition letter). https://thehill.com/business/3912232-conservative-coalition-takes-aim-at-bidens-irs-run-tax-preparation-service/ — secondary.
21. Progressive Policy Institute, "Return-Free Filing Won't Fix What's Wrong With America's Tax System," 2020. https://www.progressivepolicy.org/publication/return-free-filing-wont-fix-whats-wrong-with-americas-tax-system/ — secondary (steelman source).
22. Warren press release + one-pager, "Direct File Act of 2026," March 2026 ($23B/yr savings estimate; 94% satisfaction). https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-sherman-160-lawmakers-introduce-direct-file-act-to-guarantee-free-easy-tax-filing-for-americans/ — secondary/advocacy.
23. Intuit FY2024 results (Consumer Group $4.4B), Aug 2024. https://investors.intuit.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1202/ — primary (SEC-furnished).
24. H&R Block FY24 results ($3.6B revenue), Aug 2024. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/08/15/2931243/0/en/ — primary (company release).
25. Marketplace, "Trump administration kills IRS' Direct File. What now?" Nov 2025. https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/11/12/trump-kills-irs-direct-file-what-now — secondary.
26. Nextgov/FCW, "Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states," Nov 2025. https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/11/direct-file-wont-happen-2026-irs-tells-states/409309/ — secondary.
27. FedScoop, "IRS overestimated Direct File costs last year by $45 million" (TIGTA: $16M actual vs $61.2M estimate), 2026. https://fedscoop.com/irs-cost-to-run-direct-file/ — secondary.
28. NTU Foundation, "A Better Way Forward on Tax Filing after the Demise of Direct File" ($138/return computation). https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/a-better-way-forward-on-tax-filing-after-the-demise-of-direct-file — secondary (opposition source).
29. IRS EITC participation estimate (~20% of eligible don't claim) — unverified this pass; standard IRS figure, confirm at irs.gov/eitc before "reviewed."
30. H&R Block seasonal preparer headcount (~60,000+) — unverified; confirm in H&R Block 10-K.

PRA group's take 2026-07-23

This policy is still compelling. Intuit is a vampire squid sucking the blood of the American people.

Intuit and the politicians they buy are super-corrupt. The legistlations might include some sort of public financing of politicians. That is, if politicians refuse donations from accounting firms (like intuit an HR Block) for a ten year period they receive significant public funding.

Next steps:

For each of these ideas, create a new research document and link to that document. This is the most interesting project, becasue of it's simplicity. 1. Should this be its own website / fundraise / attribution loop? → policy-03-ctas.md (answered: yes to its own site, no to fundraising; the demo is the call-to-action, signatures are the metric) 2. How could we set a goal and work backwards? Maybe, write a specific policy / law, and work backwards to getting it passed? 3. Let's talk open source. Is there a way to create an interesting website that is basically a completely free demo implementation of how the IRS website would work if this were implemented? Like, actually spend 500 USD on Fable 5 credits and code a working demo implementation Django website, with technical roadmaps for sharding it out to support 400M Americans? All open source (EKS, PostGreSQL, runnable on stock hardware?) Maybe it even has a built in chatbot - WHY? Inspiration. Maybe, showing that this could be cheaply executed would inspire the massses to rally arround the claim. - WHY THIS PROJECT FIRST? Housing would have a 100X greater impact on America than this policy, so why do this first? Because, if PRA could pass it, it would generate instant legitamacy.