“A Government Accountability Report in April 2022 found that 70 percent of taxpayers were eligible to use an existing free-file program but just 3 percent actually used the service.”
Intuit has spent at least $25.6 million on lobbying since 2006 and H&R Block about $9.6 million. The NAACP spent $140,000. Intuit now calls a government filing system one that “will not be free,” while taxpayers pay an average of $140 a year to prepare returns. Seventy percent of filers qualify for the industry’s own free program and 3 percent use it. That gap is the business model.