Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) doesn’t have a staff yet and won’t technically exist for another two months, but the two are already reportedly looking at substantial changes to the government’s status quo. Among those, according to a report in the Washington Post, is the creation of a mobile app that would let Americans file their taxes (for free) on the go.
Should that app materialize, it would come on the heels of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s launch of the Direct File service, which lets people file their taxes online for free.
The Trump transition team did not reply to requests for comments about the report and Fast Company could not independently verify the report. Musk, however, has been especially chatty on X about the IRS and simplifying taxes. On Tuesday morning, he replied, “Yes,” to a user who declared, “It’s time to reset the tax code—Make it simple enough so that it takes average Americans less than one hour to fill and file their own taxes.” He also reposted a video with the comment, “Crazy idea: let’s simplify the tax code.”
Yeah
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024
Crazy idea: let’s simplify the tax code 🤷♂️ https://t.co/TUQRiEbKh3
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024
How new taxes start vs how they end https://t.co/hAjlGYfd6L
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024
The conversations about the tax-filing app are said to be “highly preliminary,” according to the Post, and are not the chief focus of DOGE. That department, as described by Trump, is meant to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
Still, just the talk that DOGE might be creating an app had a big impact on companies that currently help Americans file their taxes. Shares of Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) and H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) both plunged Tuesday on the news. H&R Block was off more than 8% in mid-day trading, while Intuit fell 5%.
Simplifying tax preparation
Talk of the app comes after the successful pilot launch of a new IRS filing tool last year. More than 100,000 Americans used Direct File, letting them prepare and file their taxes online free of charge, without the need of a third-party provider. And the feedback, from taxpayers, was largely positive, resulting in a larger rollout for the coming tax year.
During the 2024 pilot test, Direct File was available in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York State, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington State, and Wyoming. For the 2025 tax-filing season, Direct File will also be available in Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The tool was created as part of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Overhauling the tax code has been a longstanding topic of discussion for Trump. In his first administration, he touted a “simplified” tax form that fit on a postcard. “Hard-working taxpayers won’t have to spend as much time filling out their taxes,” said then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The postcard IRS form only lasted a year, though. People realized they’d still have to find an envelope for it, or else expose their Social Security number and details of their financial lives to anyone who saw the form. And the IRS received complaints that it was a more complicated way of filing taxes.
DOGE has picked up that particular drum, posting a call earlier this week on X to simplify the tax code, writing, “In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words. Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year.”
Changing the tax code, however, is outside of DOGE’s scope. Doing so requires an act of Congress. And because of all the nuances in the tax code, it could be complicated to create a simple tax-filing app that would be useful to most Americans.