{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.bennet.senate.gov/2024/05/17/press-releases-id-de0686f1-b6e4-4cde-ba0e-330c1b86f544/", "Bennet, Hickenlooper, 136 Colleagues Urge Biden Administration to Expand Access to IRS Free Tax Filing Option", "2024-05-17", "2024", "2024-05", "Democrat", "Senate", "CO", "Michael F. Bennet", "B001267", "www.bennet.senate.gov", "bennet", "https://www.bennet.senate.gov/news/page/", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2014 Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet, chair of the Senate Finance Committee\u2019s Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight, and John Hickenlooper joined 136 of their Senate and House colleagues in a letter to U.S. Department of the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Daniel Werfel applauding the successful pilot of the Direct File program and urging them to expand access to more Americans.\n\n\u201cThe Direct File pilot has been a clear and resounding success,\u201d wrote Bennet, Hickenlooper and the lawmakers. \u201cWe now call on you to make Direct File a permanent program and to expand its functionality and scope, eventually making it available to most taxpayers, further increasing its impact.\u201d\n\nIn 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act and invested approximately $80 billion to modernize the IRS, improve customer service, cut the tax return backlog, and improve the agency\u2019s tax evasion enforcement. In May 2023, the Biden administration announced they would launch a Direct File pilot in 2024.\n\nOver 140,000 Americans across 12 states used the IRS Direct File pilot this tax filing season, saving taxpayers more than $90 million in refunds and an estimated $5.6 million in preparation fees. In a survey, 90 percent of users rated their experience as \u201cExcellent\u201d or \u201cAbove Average,\u201d and 90 percent of survey respondents who used customer service similarly found the experience \u201cExcellent\u201d or \u201cAbove Average.\u201d\n\nThe text of the letter is available HERE and below.\n\nDear Secretary Yellen and Commissioner Werfel,\n\nWith the 2024 tax filing season at its end, we write to commend you on the historic and resoundingly successful launch of Direct File, the first free, public, electronic federal tax filing tool in U.S. history. Taxpayers want and deserve a free and easy filing option, and thanks to this year\u2019s pilot, taxpayers used Direct File to claim over $90 million in tax refunds and save $5.6 million in estimated filing fees, with 90 percent of surveyed users rating their experience positively and 86 percent saying their experience with the tool increased their trust in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We applaud your leadership and Direct File\u2019s incredible success this year, and we call on you to make Direct File a permanent program, expanding it and improving it further next year and in the years to come.\n\nIn May 2023, the IRS and Treasury Department announced plans to pilot a Direct File tool in 2024, noting that the pilot would allow \u201cthe IRS to test functionality for some taxpayers, evaluate success, and use lessons learned to inform the growth of the tool.\u201d At the time, many of us wrote to you in support of Direct File. This filing season, the tool launched as a phased, limited-scope rollout in line with tech industry best practices.\n\nThe Direct File pilot has been a clear and resounding success. Over 140,000 taxpayers used the tool across the 12 pilot states, with a survey of 11,000 users finding that 90 percent ranked their experience with Direct File as \u201cExcellent\u201d or \u201cAbove Average,\u201d and 90 percent of survey respondents who used customer service similarly found the experience \u201cExcellent\u201d or \u201cAbove Average.\u201d Other surveys found 96 percent of users were satisfied with integrated state filing, 82 to 87 percent would recommend Direct File, and 74 to 93 percent prefer it to the previous filing method they used.\n\nIndividual users also raved about the time and money they saved and the quality of the service they received:\n\n\u2022 \u201cI don\u2019t want to call myself a dummy, but this is taxes for dummies right here,\u201d said the first Direct File user, an HR specialist in Texas who saved nearly $400 in tax prep fees. \u201cI just see it being helpful for so many millions of people.\u201d\n\n\u2022 \u201cIt was the fastest I\u2019ve ever done my taxes,\u201d said one taxpayer in California. \u201cI didn\u2019t have to worry about someone upselling me.\u201d\n\n\u2022 \u201cThere were no random ads, like \u2018What am I clicking on?\u2019\u201d said another taxpayer in Texas, who saved the $80 she typically spends to file her taxes.\n\n\u2022 \u201cI finished this and I was like, wait, I?m done? That was so easy,\u201d reported a New York filer. \u201cIt?s not just that you?re saving, you know, 80 bucks on TurboTax or whatever. It?s so much less of a stressful thing.\u201d\n\n\u2022 \u201cIt was one of the greatest experiences I have had doing [my taxes],\u201d said an Arizonan.\n\n\u2022 \u201cIt was the most convenient way I\u2019ve ever filed my taxes,\u201d said a taxpayer in Washington State. \u201cI got to be honest, it surprised me how simple it was.\u201d\n\n\u2022 \u201cIt was a walk in the park,\u201d said another Californian, who \u201cbasically did my taxes on my lunch break\u201d and saved $100 that he would have otherwise spent to file his taxes.\n\nThe IRS\u2019s delivery of this new, wildly successful filing tool less than 18 months after receiving significant new funds from the Inflation Reduction Act demonstrates the huge returns from investing in the IRS and in government technology in general. As the Atlantic wrote: \u201cThat Direct File exists at all is shocking. That it\u2019s pretty good is borderline miraculous\u2026 It\u2019s a glimpse of a world where government tech benefits millions of Americans.\u201d\n\nDirect File\u2019s success is even more notable given the failures of the U.S. tax filing system to date. The average American spends $150 and nine hours to file their taxes each year. Free File \u2013 the IRS\u2019s partnership with private tax preparation companies to offer free online filing \u2013 has fallen far short of expectations, reaching only 2% of taxpayers while 70% qualify. Meanwhile, Intuit (the owner of TurboTax) and H&R Block have misled taxpayers into paying for tax preparation services they are supposed to receive for free, according to the Federal Trade Commission. A recent analysis also found paid preparers targeting low-income Black and Brown communities, often making costly errors and marketing predatory payday lending products. This broken filing system blocks millions of families from accessing critical tax benefits enacted by Congress like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC).\n\nWe now call on you to make Direct File a permanent program and to expand its functionality and scope, eventually making it available to most taxpayers, further increasing its impact.\n\nSpecifically, we hope Direct File will support additional sources of income, integrate with more states, offer more flexible identity verification procedures, and accommodate additional tax benefits, with a focus on refundable credits available to low- and middle-income families. Direct File should also continue streamlining the filing process by using taxpayer data that the IRS already has. As Secretary Yellen recently said: \u201cIf [taxpayers] like [Direct File], it would be\n\nvery natural to continue to build on it\u2026 One day we hope, for example, information that taxpayers receive \u2013 W-2s and other things \u2013 could be used to pre-populate the program, making it even more usable and friendly.\u201d The pilot has already shown the value of this approach, with an April 8th update to Direct File that allowed users to import previous-year adjusted gross income data required to validate their current year returns.\n\nSuch expansions will turbocharge Direct File\u2019s usefulness. In fact, a recent report by the Economic Security Project finds that a fully-fledged Direct File \u2013 including the functionality referenced by Secretary Yellen \u2013 could save taxpayers $11 billion per year, while also delivering up to $12 billion a year in unclaimed benefits, generating over $100 of value for taxpayers for every dollar spent.\n\nAgain, we congratulate you on the success of the Direct File pilot and stand ready to work with you on making the program permanent and expanding it. We believe that the IRS can offer free and easy tax filing to every American taxpayer who wants it \u2014 and that, with Direct File, it will. We also applaud your broader efforts to invest funding that we passed in the Inflation Reduction Act to improve taxpayer services and to ensure the wealthy and large corporations pay what they owe, and we will continue to fight to protect the funding that makes this progress possible.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:12:30Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.bennet.senate.gov/2024/05/17/press-releases-id-de0686f1-b6e4-4cde-ba0e-330c1b86f544/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8221680764108896, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}