Comment by nerdponx
8 days ago
There's nothing moral about it. The profitability of the tax prep industry depends on taxes being hard to file. Lack of official free e-file is regulatory capture. Any associated blather about making taxes cumbersome to keep people mistrustful of taxes is a fig leaf, as is this case with most "conservative" viewpoints.
The fact that you need to pay to file taxes it's so distopic that only USA could have invented it
Without evidence that the Trump administration cares about protecting the tax prep industry, this is just a conspiracy theory.
Heck, the Trump admin wants to get rid of income tax entirely, so they're hardly the natural allies of the tax prep industry.
They are because they have an interest in keeping tax filing difficult and unapproachable, to keep public animus against taxes at its maximum. Coincidentally this is 100% in alignment with the tax prep industry whose entire existence is based on products which solve and handle the complicated tax situation.
As he said, conspiracy theory
You're wrong:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888326592096547245
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886092387098796499
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858872775395426553
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1873796626223161603
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1861824194113343870
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The balance of actions taken by the Trump administration suggests it generally is in favor of doing whatever people who suck up enough and donate enough money want.
The history of lobbying on behalf of the tax prep industry is easy enough to find.
Is drawing a line through Trump's well-professed love of sycophants and people who make him money and that lobbying and motivation, to their current actions, so far fetched to you?
I think taking a wait-and-see approach to things like "Trump wants to get rid of income tax entirely" would be wise until we see where the implementation ends up. In the meantime lets talk about what has actually been done to date.