Simplifying income tax returns may be good for individual Americans, but bad for software companies that do business with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

 

Until now, 14 software makers have sold tax preparation programs to the IRS for the agency to make available to the public. These businesses could lose out if President Barack Obama follows through on his 2008 campaign promise to simplify the tax process down to a five-minute procedure.

 

According to Republic Report, Intuit has “lobbied incredibly hard to kill” easy-to-use programs in California. On the federal level, Inuit’s lobbying costs have tripled in five years. The website cited an Intuit report to its investors revealing company leaders are worried about “significant competition from the public sector, where we face the risk of federal and state taxing authorities developing software or other systems to facilitate tax return preparation and electronic filing at no charge to taxpayers.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Corruption Is Why You Can’t Do Your Taxes in Five Minutes (by Matt Stoller, Republic Report)