Job creators, workers, and consumers are at a historic crossroads. For four years, the Biden administration’s unfettered regulatory rampage, irrational federal spending, shocking price inflation, dangerous energy scheme, and alarming open border policy left working families and job creators reeling and craving commonsense public policy solutions to these preventable failures. During the campaign, President Donald Trump spoke directly to the concerns of working families and was subsequently elected to establish a new course for people’s futures.
Trump’s efforts to restrain costly and unnecessary regulations, restrict wasteful federal spending, reduce inflation, resurrect energy independence, and restore border security are already well underway within the first months of his administration. Two pillars of this effort are congressional efforts to ensure that the 2017 Trump tax cuts do not terminate this year and the administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump is laser-focused on lowering the tax burden and empowering DOGE to make the federal government more efficient and effective. These achievable goals are mutually beneficial and will enormously benefit working families and job creators. Government wastefulness hurts everyone, and the administration is smart to be looking at fixing big government boondoggles as well as more targeted failures.
The shortcomings of the IRS, which include a history of enforcement overreach, misplaced priorities, and chronic mismanagement, are a perfect example in this regard. The current tax cut debate in Congress and the ongoing work of DOGE are a unique opportunity for positive disruption that will compel the IRS to transform its identity and mission.
The IRS has a deserved reputation for inefficiency and a misguided emphasis on enforcement rather than customer service, which creates a climate of frustration, fear, and fury for its core client, the taxpayer. It does not have to be this way.
Transforming the IRS into a modernized, trusted, customer-focused agency that does more with less is a must-do item, one on which the Treasury Department, DOGE, and Congress are already hard at work. As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent commented recently, “I have three priorities for the IRS: collections, privacy, and customer service.”
The IRS must focus on providing key services to support beleaguered taxpayers, such as ensuring ample resources for call centers, utilizing improved technology, and embracing a customer-first posture to better provide essential information and assistance, all of which will support taxpayers and tax compliance.
The IRS should also prioritize the ability of working families to pay their taxes as simply and inexpensively as possible. An existing prototype is the Direct File program, a blueprint for how DOGE’s broader reforms can succeed under Trump’s leadership.
This innovative program has the promise to be more than a one-off success for this administration; it’s a replicable model for how government can do way better with far less. It enables individuals with simpler tax returns (including taxpayers eligible for the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit) to submit the returns directly to the IRS free of charge. It now also includes 25 states and allows for forms such as 1099-Rs — ensuring seniors can access free, simplified tax filing for the first time.
Bessent has committed to maintain Direct File through the 2025 tax filing season. This is a sound decision that will allow the administration to continue to consider key questions about the future of the program and ways it could be renewed or improved.
DOGE MUST AUDIT AND DISARM THE IRS
These questions include the benefits and costs of allowing a free tax filing option directly through the IRS, the merits of maintaining a program that makes it easier for eligible taxpayers to claim credits and deductions such as the EITC and the CTC that provide important benefits to working families, whether to limit eligibility to individuals with simpler tax returns, and the potential advantages of transforming and streamlining the program, such as creating an app (as DOGE head Elon Musk has suggested) or leveraging AI or other technology platforms to allow working families to file simpler returns with the IRS for free.
The coming months will determine if the Trump administration and Congress can successfully extend the Trump tax cuts, modernize the federal government, and revolutionize agencies such as the IRS to put working families and job creators first. Success will help cement the economic course correction that our nation desperately needs.
Rob Green is the former workplace policy director for the House Committee on Education and Workforce and previously served in government relations roles representing restaurant and retail businesses.