Citizens Against Government Waste Names Sen. Elizabeth Warren April 2024 Porker of the Month
April 16 2024 - 3:44PM
Business Wire
Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) its April 2024 Porker of the Month for
pushing for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to prepare and
collect everyone’s taxes.
An IRS tax preparation system is duplicative, costly, and
dangerous. The agency’s Direct File system is already failing since
only 50,000 taxpayers have used it out of the 19 million who are
eligible. By comparison, 70 million taxpayers have gotten their
taxes done by private sector companies since the Free File program
was launched with the IRS in 2003. Sen. Warren has pushed for years
to set up an IRS tax preparation system and the agency launched its
Direct File system without any statutory authority. The IRS has not
only wasted money setting up its tax preparation system but also
violated privacy when 700,000 Americans had their Social Security
numbers and other information exposed in 2016.
CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “Sen. Warren’s push for the
duplicative and wasteful Direct File program shows her complete
disregard for protecting taxpayer dollars and information. Only
taxpayers know their personal financial situation, but the Direct
File program will allow the IRS to become the preparer, biller, and
enforcer of everyone’s taxes. Filing taxes is already difficult and
stressful enough for taxpayers. Sen. Warren should be ashamed of
her proposal that will waste money and harm taxpayers across
America. For her efforts to expand the size and scope of the IRS’s
power and take away personal control, Sen. Warren was an easy
choice for this month’s Porker.”
Citizens Against Government Waste is a
nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste,
fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. For more than two
decades, Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers
and government officials who have shown a blatant disregard for the
taxpayers.
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Alexandra Abrams (202) 467-5310 aabrams@cagw.org