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WASHINGTON (AP) — Mia Francis, a 22-year-old barista from Boston, filed her taxes on her own this year for the first time, using a free government tax filing program that made it easy because it did most of the work for her.
Francis said it took 45 minutes to finish her taxes with the IRS Direct File program, an electronic tax return filing system that the IRS made permanent last year and that has rolled out to 25 states.
Francis is expecting a $530 refund. And because she saved cash by not using a commercial tax preparation company to file her taxes, “that money will go a long way,” she said. She plans to use it for a trip to Amsterdam this year.
Despite its popularity with Francis and other members of the American public, the IRS Direct File’s fate remains unclear as Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency cleave their way through the federal bureaucracy. So far, the program is still available for use ahead of the April 15 tax filing deadline, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent committed during his January confirmation hearing to maintaining it, at least for this tax season.
Representatives from the Internal Revenue Service and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press on their plans for Direct File. But one Republican tax expert says the IRS never got congressional authorization to create Direct File. And Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation firms complain the program is a waste of money because free filing programs already exist, although they are hard to use.
Direct File was rolled out as a pilot program in 2024 after the IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a “direct file” system as part of the money it received from the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. Last May, the agency announced that the program would be made permanent.
The IRS accepted 140,803 returns filed by taxpayers using Direct File in the 12 states where it was available last tax season. It’s been expanded to include half the country this year. It is unclear how many taxpayers have used Direct File this year.
Merici Vinton, an original architect of Direct File from the U.S. Digital Service, noted the ease and accessibility of the program and called it “a great example of how people should interact with the government in the 21st century.”
“We effectively launched a startup in the IRS,” she said. “It was built by an in-house product team, in an iterative manner, and we ship updates to the software to improve user experience in real time based on feedback. If we continue to invest in it, both taxpayers and the IRS can benefit.”
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