EDITORIAL: Why President Trump ending Biden's Direct File is a "great win for everyone"
The Trump administration is scoring a win on politics and policy by getting rid of the Biden-era Direct File rule. Here's why.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the end of the deeply-controversial Biden-era IRS Direct File program that has long been under fire from both Republicans and from good government organizations.
This move is both great policy and great politics for the Trump administration. For over a year, our sources on and off the Hill have blasted Direct File as an unconstitutional power grab by a power-hungry Biden administration, and the administration is giving both taxpayers and conservatives more broadly a huge win at a critical juncture.
According to the Department of the Treasury itself, the Direct File program was expensive, unnecessary, and the costs could have skyrocketed even further. A source close to the Trump administration told the Washington Reporter that “President Trump knew that Direct File was an Elizabeth Warren scheme meant to force Americans to trust the IRS to be the tax preparer as well as the tax auditor. This is a great win for everyone except the left-wing consultants that got rich off this racket.”
From the day Direct File was proposed, Republicans blasted it as a blatant overreach. The Reporter documented GOP concerns for over a year, noting that lawmakers viewed the program as “nothing more than an excuse to supercharge the IRS at great cost to taxpayers.”
In an interview with the Reporter, Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), for example, noted that under Direct File, “the IRS wants to be the tax collector, auditor, enforcer, and now tax preparer — a judge, jury, and Lord High Executioner.”
“The private sector has provided taxpayers with free file options for years,” Barrasso told us in the summer of 2024. “These cost taxpayers and the government absolutely nothing. The IRS is recklessly spending money on an unnecessary program that puts Americans and their private data at risk. It gives the government full control over the tax filing system. Republicans will continue to push policies that shrink the size of this supersized IRS.”
A Senate source told the Reporter that “President Trump promised to get rid of the deep state at the IRS, and ending this program is a great start. The numerous Congressional Republicans who called for this exact action will be thrilled. The Direct File was the camel’s nose under the tent for the Marxist’s dream of universal basic income.”
Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.), the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, explained that “Congress did not authorize the IRS to become the nation’s tax preparer. The American people neither want nor asked for this program.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) who led Senate efforts to dismantle Direct File, calling it “a conflict of interest” by which the IRS acted both preparer and auditor.
Additional Republican policymakers described it as a power grab, telling the Reporter that it was “disastrous and invasive” and insisted that House Republicans “will work with Trump to repeal these actions.”
Launched under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Direct File was never statutorily approved. Instead, the IRS used language in the IRA that created a pilot program to justify a massive new program that costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
Treasury’s statement confirms the program was not popular or used, likely because most Americans do not trust the IRS to act as a tax preparer and tax auditor at the same time.
This is not simply a program termination. It’s a policy statement. For conservatives, the ending of Direct File validates years of warnings about taxpayer cost, federal overreach and agency mission creep. The Reporter tracked this campaign from start to finish.