{"id":15115,"date":"2025-03-02T18:00:22","date_gmt":"2025-03-02T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.40.31.108\/?p=15115"},"modified":"2025-03-03T20:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T19:29:13","slug":"email-reveals-musk-ally-pushing-to-shut-down-irs-free-tax-filing-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/email-reveals-musk-ally-pushing-to-shut-down-irs-free-tax-filing-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Email Reveals Musk Ally Pushing to Shut Down IRS Free Tax Filing Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Nick Robins-Early \u2013 The Guardian<\/p>\n

The program is apparently being closed according to email from former Tesla engineer installed in GSA<\/p>\n

An\u00a0Elon Musk<\/a>\u00a0ally installed in the US government said in a late night email going into Saturday that the office behind a popular free online tax filing option would be shuttered \u2013 and its employees would be let go.<\/p>\n

The 18F office within the General Services Administration (GSA) created the IRS Direct File program that allows free online tax filings. It has been a frequent target of Musk, and one of the billionaire businessman\u2019s close associates who holds a key position in the GSA informed staffers that the agency would close 18F in an email to staffers that arrived around 1am on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

According to the message, the firings were in support of the executive order\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0issued after beginning his second US presidency, which has empowered Musk\u2019s so-called \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d (Doge) taskforce to cut federal workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 18F Office has been identified as part of this phase of the GSA\u2019s Reduction in Force (RIF) as non-critical,\u201d the email states. \u201cThis decision was made with explicit direction from the top levels of leadership within both the Administration and GSA. There are no other TTS programs impacted at this time, however we anticipate more change in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The email came from Thomas Shedd, a 28-year-old former Tesla software engineer who took over in late January as head of the GSA\u2019s Technology Transformation Services. It\u2019s not immediately clear what may happen to 18F programs such as the direct filing system or the total number of workers that the GSA is firing from the office, which has about 90 employees.<\/p>\n

Musk claimed in early February that he had \u201cdeleted\u201d 18F while responding on X to a rightwing influencer who accused the agency of being \u201cfar left\u201d. Musk didn\u2019t elaborate on his statement, which\u00a0caused confusion\u00a0as the 18F website and services like its direct file program remained online.<\/p>\n

In addition to working on the free tax return program, the 18F office worked across government agencies to update technology and launch new software products. It worked on more than 31 projects across different government agencies in 2024, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa). It has been part of the GSA since 2014.<\/p>\n

Shortly after taking over TTS, Shedd\u00a0told staffers\u00a0that he planned to run the agency like a tech startup and that he wanted to implement artificial intelligence programs throughout the government. The GSA is one of the major agencies that Musk and his allies have taken over as part of their wider and potentially illegal dismantling of the federal government, which has cut services such as humanitarian aid and\u00a0disease prevention\u00a0while attempting to reshape agencies along ideological grounds.<\/p>\n

Please follow our blog<\/a> with the latest news on the IRS free filing software.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick Robins-Early \u2013 The Guardian The program is apparently being closed according to email from former Tesla engineer installed in GSA An\u00a0Elon Musk\u00a0ally installed in the US government said in a late night email going into Saturday that the office behind a popular free online tax filing option would be shuttered \u2013 and its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-irs","category-us-tax-return-1040-1040nr"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustaxconsultants.es\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}