My Semi-Annual Complaint Email to the IRS
[Submitted via "Contact Us" form regarding the irs.gov website, for lack of a better place to send it]

Hi,

This is nothing specific to the website, just a complaint that the IRS does not provide e-filing through its own website for free to everyone. Last year I submitted my federal taxes through some rinky-dink free tax-prep company website, and it turned out fine. I'll probably do it again this year. But I'm disgusted year after year to see that the IRS has not set up a universal, secure, free e-filing system open to everyone. I think it could be done cheaply and easily, and that it could be just as secure as any of the fly-by-night companies that currently provide the service to people who qualify.

The company that I used last time provided an adequate but amateurish system for entering all my info. I'm sure if they can do it, then the federal government could do it at least as well, probably better. Hell, look at irs.gov. I've found forms and information and answers to questions when I needed them. The instructions on that tax prep company website were confusing, and I ended up doing my federal taxes online, my state and local taxes through regular mail.

The only explanation for these extra layers of confusion and bureacracy and middle-men seems to be the profit that will go to tax prep companies through the current scam. I hope that the politicians or IRS officials who continue this backwards policy will someday stop being paid enough to maintain the scam, or that the levels of extra bureacracy will be so absurd that they'll realize it will save time on your end just to have one system by which everyone can e-file.

Sorry for bothering you. I don't expect any response, but I have to get this off my chest every few years. It would be cheap and easy to institute a reliable system for free e-filing for everyone, and the only reason I can figure why it hasn't been done is that the scam is too profitable for some people.

Thanks,
Rob