Casey Joins Colleagues to Tout Success of IRS Free Direct File Program, Urge Biden Administration to Make It Permanent

Taxpayers gave Direct File rave reviews, with 90 percent rating their experience positively and 86 percent saying it increased their trust in the IRS

Casey voted for law that created Direct File program, and pushed for it to be made available to as many Americans as possible

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) joined more than 130 of his colleagues in the House and the Senate to send a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Daniel Werfel, applauding the successful pilot of the Direct File program, and urging them to make it permanent and expand its functionality and scope to states like Pennsylvania. The letter follows the conclusion of the 2024 tax season and implementation of the IRS Direct File program in 12 pilot states which allowed taxpayers to file their returns for free, directly with the IRS. 

“Taxpayers want and deserve a free and easy filing option, and thanks to this year’s pilot, taxpayers used Direct File to claim over $90 million in tax refunds and save $5.6 million in estimated filing fees,” wrote the lawmakers. “We applaud your leadership and Direct File’s incredible success this year, and we call on you to make Direct File a permanent program, expanding it and improving it further next year and in the years to come.”

The Biden administration announced in May of last year that they would be launching a Direct File pilot in 2024. The IRS has long allowed Americans to file their taxes for free using paper forms, but has not previously offered an online, modern tax filing portal like is available for other financial products and services. A survey of 11,000 users found that 90 percent ranked their experience with Direct File as “Excellent” or “Above Average,” and 90 percent of survey respondents who used customer service similarly found the experience “Excellent” or “Above Average.” 

Senator Casey has long pushed for the IRS to make tax filing easy, simple, and secure for all Pennsylvania taxpayers, including by voting for the Direct File program and pushing for it to be implemented. In 2022, Casey voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which provided the IRS with funding to improve customer service and study and implement this Direct File pilot program. Casey applauded the announcement of the Direct File program, and pushed for it to be implemented as soon as possible.

You can read the full text of the letter HERE or below:

Dear Secretary Yellen and Commissioner Werfel,

With the 2024 tax filing season at its end, we write to commend you on the historic and resoundingly successful launch of Direct File, the first free, public, electronic federal tax filing tool in U.S. history. Taxpayers want and deserve a free and easy filing option, and thanks to this year’s pilot, taxpayers used Direct File to claim over $90 million in tax refunds and save $5.6 million in estimated filing fees, with 90 percent of surveyed users rating their experience positively and 86 percent saying their experience with the tool increased their trust in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We applaud your leadership and Direct File’s incredible success this year, and we call on you to make Direct File a permanent program, expanding it and improving it further next year and in the years to come.

In May 2023, the IRS and Treasury Department announced plans to pilot a Direct File tool in 2024, noting that the pilot would allow “the IRS to test functionality for some taxpayers, evaluate success, and use lessons learned to inform the growth of the tool.” At the time, many of us wrote to you in support of Direct File. This filing season, the tool launched as a phased, limited-scope rollout in line with tech industry best practices.

The Direct File pilot has been a clear and resounding success. Over 140,000 taxpayers used the tool across the 12 pilot states, with a survey of 11,000 users finding that 90 percent ranked their experience with Direct File as “Excellent” or “Above Average,” and 90 percent of survey respondents who used customer service similarly found the experience “Excellent” or “Above Average.” Other surveys found 96 percent of users were satisfied with integrated state filing, 82 to 87 percent would recommend Direct File, and 74 to 93 percent prefer it to the previous filing method they used.

Individual users also raved about the time and money they saved and the quality of the service they received:

• “I don’t want to call myself a dummy, but this is taxes for dummies right here,” said the first Direct File user, an HR specialist in Texas who saved nearly $400 in tax prep fees. “I just see it being helpful for so many millions of people.”
• “It was the fastest I’ve ever done my taxes,” said one taxpayer in California. “I didn’t have to worry about someone upselling me.”
• “There were no random ads, like ‘What am I clicking on?’” said another taxpayer in Texas, who saved the $80 she typically spends to file her taxes.
• “I finished this and I was like, wait, I?m done? That was so easy,” reported a New York filer. “It?s not just that you?re saving, you know, 80 bucks on TurboTax or whatever. It?s so much less of a stressful thing.”
• “It was one of the greatest experiences I have had doing [my taxes],” said an Arizonan.
• “It was the most convenient way I’ve ever filed my taxes,” said a taxpayer in Washington State. “I got to be honest, it surprised me how simple it was.”

• “It was a walk in the park,” said another Californian, who “basically did my taxes on my lunch break” and saved $100 that he would have otherwise spent to file his taxes.

The IRS’s delivery of this new, wildly successful filing tool less than 18 months after receiving significant new funds from the Inflation Reduction Act demonstrates the huge returns from investing in the IRS and in government technology in general. As the Atlantic wrote: “That Direct File exists at all is shocking. That it’s pretty good is borderline miraculous… It’s a glimpse of a world where government tech benefits millions of Americans.”

Direct File’s success is even more notable given the failures of the U.S. tax filing system to date. The average American spends $150 and nine hours to file their taxes each year. Free File – the IRS’s partnership with private tax preparation companies to offer free online filing – has fallen far short of expectations, reaching only 2% of taxpayers while 70% qualify. Meanwhile, Intuit (the owner of TurboTax) and H&R Block have misled taxpayers into paying for tax preparation services they are supposed to receive for free, according to the Federal Trade Commission. A recent analysis also found paid preparers targeting low-income Black and Brown communities, often making costly errors and marketing predatory payday lending products. This broken filing system blocks millions of families from accessing critical tax benefits enacted by Congress like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC).

We now call on you to make Direct File a permanent program and to expand its functionality and scope, eventually making it available to most taxpayers, further increasing its impact.

Specifically, we hope Direct File will support additional sources of income, integrate with more states, offer more flexible identity verification procedures, and accommodate additional tax benefits, with a focus on refundable credits available to low- and middle-income families. Direct File should also continue streamlining the filing process by using taxpayer data that the IRS already has. As Secretary Yellen recently said: “If [taxpayers] like [Direct File], it would be very natural to continue to build on it… One day we hope, for example, information that taxpayers receive – W-2s and other things – could be used to pre-populate the program, making it even more usable and friendly.” The pilot has already shown the value of this approach, with an April 8^th update to Direct File that allowed users to import previous-year adjusted gross income data required to validate their current year returns.