In 2024, the US Internal Revenue Service piloted its “Direct File” program, through which its victims — American taxpayers — in some states could complete tax returns online directly with the IRS rather than through third party tax preparation services. In 2025, the program expanded to 50 states and millions of Americans saved themselves a little money.

Spare taxpayers the cost of paying private sector professionals to navigate complicated government paperwork? Seems like the least the government can do, right?

Enter the “Department of Government Efficiency” and lobbyists for the “Free File Alliance,” a tax preparation industry group that provides supposedly free tax services in  “public-private partnerships” with the government.

While Direct File hasn’t actually been eliminated yet, the “Big Beautiful Bill” signed by president Donald Trump on July 4 directs the IRS (per DOGE recommendation) to find a replacement for it by returning to those aforementioned “public-private partnerships.”

Why do commercial tax preparers want to do your taxes for free? They don’t, as many taxpayers quickly learn. If your tax return is more complicated than the old “1040-EZ,” chances are you’ll have to cough up. The “free” claim is just clickbait to get you in the door.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, Americans will spend nearly $150 billion dollars on tax preparation this year — not counting the value of the 7.1 billion hours they’ll put into the affair even with that professional help (your bit of that money and time is already gone unless you own a business and/or do quarterly filing).

If you have to ask why, the answer is usually “money.” And that’s the answer here. Direct File threatens to derail a $150 billion gravy train. “Tax professionals” are more than willing to spend a little  on lobbying (let’s speak plain English: “Bribing politicians”) to keep said train on the rails and moving at full speed.

So, I have an alternative proposal to offer, because of course I do.

Two alternative proposals, actually.

The first one is “eliminate the federal income tax.”

No dice? OK, how about this:

A 100%, “refundable,” tax credit for all payments to tax preparation services, plus $94.25 (the federal minimum wage of $7.50 per hour for the 13 hours the average American spends on the process).

No, not a deduction from your “gross adjusted income,” especially not a deduction that only applies if your TOTAL deductions exceed the “standard deduction” amount.

A direct deduction from your tax BILL, with payment to you if your costs exceed the amount the IRS pretends you “owe.”

Tax preparation costs are really taxes themselves — government just has you pay them to its “public-private partners” instead of to the IRS. Therefore they should be deducted from the total bill, right?

Implement that and see how quickly “Direct File” returns.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On July 14, Roman Storm’s trial  — on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and violating US sanctions — began in a Manhattan courtroom. The allegations sound pretty serious, but they all boil down to one real action: Developing, in cooperation with others, a computer program.

That program is Tornado Cash, an “open source, non-custodial, fully decentralized cryptocurrency tumbler.”

In English, it’s a program that anyone can use, that no one controls, and that can be used to keep prying eyes off cryptocurrency transactions. It obscures who’s sending  how much to whom. It’s a useful tool, whether you’re just a regular guy who likes his privacy or a group of North Korean hackers looking to “launder” your take.

Tornado Cash is “legal” in the US, at least for the moment. In 2022, the US Treasury banned US citizens from using it, citing “national security,” but withdrew the ban earlier this year after Tornado Cash users sued.

But its developers remain in legal jeopardy.

Alexey Pertsev languishes in a Netherlands prison, sentenced to five years.  Roman Semenov is wanted by the FBI. And Roman Storm is in the dock in New York.

For writing a computer program.

This case was settled — or at least should have been settled — nearly three decades ago in Bernstein vs. US Department of Justice.  One Daniel J. Bernstein sued over the US government’s “export controls” on encryption software, controls based on the fiction that such software constitutes “munitions.”

In 1996, The US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that  “code is speech,” and therefore protected by the First Amendment. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling.

That PARTICULAR code COULD be used by PARTICULAR people to do PARTICULAR things is irrelevant to our absolute right to create such code.

That would be true even if code wasn’t speech. A lock pick can be used by a burglar or by a locksmith; a gun can be used to defend your home or to murder your spouse; an airplane can be used to transport passengers or to kill thousands in a terror attack. None of those things are, or should, be illegal just because they can all be used to do illegal things.

Roman Storm’s lawyers should file, and the court should grant, a motion to dismiss the charges — and the US government should stop attacking our speech and our financial privacy.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Eugene Debs speaking in Canton, Ohio, shortly before his arrest for sedition.

“I now think the United States may well be evolving,” Damon Linker writes at Persuasion, “to become a competitive authoritarian system in which free elections are still held but fall far short of fairness.”

While I often disagree with Linker — I’m a radical libertarian, he’s a conservative-leaning centrist, do the math — I also often agree with his criticisms of Donald Trump, the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, and the faux “populism” they espouse.

But wow. I don’t know that I’ve ever resorted to the Britishism “gobsmacked” to describe my response to an op-ed before. In this case, it’s the only term that really fits.

What happened to the Damon Linker who was born in 1969 and has written on politics for decades … and why has he been replaced with a doppelgänger who, Rip Van Winkle style, apparently fell asleep in the early 1880s and just now woke up?

The whole idea of “fairness” in American elections went out at the end of the 19th century with the introduction of the “Australian” ballot — a government-printed ballot that replaced write-in elections (that is, all American elections prior to 1888).

Naturally, once the government started printing ballots, the government got to decide which candidates could appear on those ballots.

Would it shock you to learn that the two “major” political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have ever since colluded to ensure that it’s always difficult, and often impossible, for independent and “third party” candidates to compete?

In 1988, those two “major” parties also took over the quadrennial ritual of “presidential debates” from the League of Women Voters, forming the Commission on Presidential Debates and turning those public affairs into bi-partisan — not multi-partisan — beauty contests.

After Ross Perot made it onto the “debate” stage in 1992, the CPD started tweaking its rules. Over the 29 years since, only Republicans and Democrats have been deemed eligible for a share of “debate” screen time.

It’s not difficult to find authoritarianism over that whole history, either.  Herding immigrants and the immigrant-adjacent off to concentration camps is nothing new (ask the Nisei about World War 2). Neither is imprisoning political opponents (Convict 9653, also known as Eugene Debs, ran for president from prison in 1920 after his conviction for speaking against military conscription).

Same play, new cast. Our “competitive authoritarian system in which free elections are still held but fall far short of fairness” is older than any living American … except, perhaps, Rip Van Linker.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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