Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren on her proposal to bring back IRS Direct File: “For just one day of bombing Iran, we could pay for 20 years”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has long been a vocal opponent of privatizing the tax filing system—ie, how things are now. When ProPublica completed an investigation in 2019 showing major tax giants like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block intentionally deterred people from accessing free filing from its sites, she and other senators called for the private tax preparers to issue refunds to taxpayers they tricked into paying for the otherwise free filing they were eligible for.

Warren grilled H&R Block and Inuit on their lobbying efforts when the two left the Free File Alliance in 2020 and 2021 respectively. She grilled them again in 2023 and again in 2024 on their lobbying efforts and on their alleged loose data collection methods. Again in 2025 when their successful lobbying led to the death knell of the IRS’ Direct File service, and as early as this morning, on social media, ahead of her introduction of the Direct File Act.

Over two decades, Intuit and H&R Block alone spent over $103 million in federal lobbying efforts to stop IRS modernization and proposed bills that would pre-fill taxpayers’ returns. In an exclusive, the Senator shared her remarks with Fortune ahead of her introduction of the Direct File Act, an effort to bring back the IRS’ short-lived but highly popular free tax filing service.

“For years, giant tax prep companies like TurboTax and H&R Block have rigged our system so they can cash in on your hard-earned dollars,” Warren’s prepared remarks say. “It’s amazing that anyone could oppose this–especially when filing your taxes is something that Americans are required by law to do each year.”

Read more: https://fortune.com/2026/04/15/exclusive-sen-elizabeth-warren-tax-preparers-direct-file/