DENVER - Governor Polis sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Bessent urging the federal government not to suspend the easy-to-use DirectFile tool, which helps save Americans time and money by streamlining the tax filing process and ensuring Americans take advantage of the credits they qualify for.
“I want to make it as simple as possible for people to file taxes and access the tax credits and deductions many Americans have already earned but often miss out on. That’s why last year we were proud to partner with the IRS so starting next year, taxpayers in Colorado could use Direct File as a one-stop shop to fully file and get their money back. That’s also why I was disappointed to see the result of Treasury’s report on Direct File, which announces the suspension of the tool and ignores how effective and accurate it was,” the letter reads.
Governor Polis has been a strong advocate for DirectFile, previously announcing that Coloradans would be able to participate in the free program starting in 2026 for the 2025 tax year. Now that the federal government has suspended the program, this unfortunately won’t be an option for Coloradans to save money.
Last year 423,450 taxpayers across 8 states logged on to Direct File, with 140,803 submitting accepted federal returns. This year, in spite of the uncertainty about Direct File’s future and no marketing budget, that number increased to 751,235 taxpayers in 25 states, with 296,531 accepted returns. Across the country, 4 million taxpayers used Direct File’s eligibility checker this year. Direct File also integrated with separate filing tools in 12 states this year, allowing taxpayers to seamlessly file their state returns with much of their tax information automatically ported over.
While Direct File launched its first full year as a tax filing tool in 2024, its bipartisan roots go back nearly three decades. In 1998 federal legislation called for the Treasury Department to develop procedures for implementing “return free” tax filing, which at least 36 other countries have. A 2003 Treasury report confirmed such a system was possible. Federal programmers and designers worked to build Direct File in a process that was transparent and included significant input from states. 8 out of 10 American taxpayers supported the IRS developing Direct File, including 83% of Republicans.
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