There is a lot of reading between the lines that needs to be done with this article:
> It's already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain.
This is roughly equivalent to saying: "New York, New Jersey, and Louisiana already do it, why not the whole country? Lobbying must be to blame!"
> William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
So the left agrees with it, I wonder what the right thinks?
> Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist
Now things are getting interesting.
> opposes IRS government tax preparation.
> allowing the IRS to act as a tax preparer could result in taxpayers paying more money
> calling return-free filing a "massive expansion of the U.S. government through a big government program."
> In 2005, Norquist testified before the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform arguing against return-free filing. The next year, Norquist and others wrote in a letter to President Bush that getting an official-looking "bill" from the IRS could be "extremely intimidating, particularly for seniors, low-income and non-English speaking citizens."
> The letter says the IRS wants to "socialize all tax preparation in America" to get higher tax revenues.
> A year after Norquist wrote Bush, a bill to limit return-free filing was introduced by a pair of unlikely allies: Reps. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the conservative House majority leader
The article says Intuit spent $11.5 million lobbying in the last five years (which in the U.S. is table scraps--see $30 million paid by Yahoo! for Summly).
What is really more likely here. That Intuit has managed to buy the government for $2 million a year, or instead that they've successfully hit on a message (free tax filing = government takeover of return preparation) that resonates with rightists and billionaires who have good reason to not want the IRS to have any part in tax return preparation, not to mention ideologues who see simpler tax filing as a slippery slope to making it easier for the government to raise taxes without push-back (on the theory that citizens are more likely to push back against taxes if they are forced to face the numbers every April).