Mina Hsiang:When the government provides a service, it should be clear, accessible, efficient, and easy to use. In twenty twenty four, the IRS rolled out Direct File as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and so they asked us at USDS to help. The USDS mission was simple, to make government services better through the use of technology and design. And tax filing was a super obvious thing for us to help with. It was critically important to make the tool both simple to use and legally sound.
In order to do this, the joint teams needed to create plain language screens that guided users to answer questions in a way that was not confusing. Doing this required extensive iteration with real users to ensure that what a person understands is actually what the question is asking.
After each cycle of user research, the team would bring the approved user language to the lawyers in the tax policy office to ensure that they were consistent with the tax law. The team also had to do all the normal stuff that government websites sometimes get wrong.
Have an attractive design that renders well on desktop browsers as well as on mobile, have a reasonable and simple login, and build out a scalable back end that makes it straightforward to add new capabilities over time. So how did it go?
By the end of tax filing season, over a hundred and forty thousand people had submitted tax returns. This was well above our target and expectations. Customer satisfaction surveys showed that ninety percent of users rated the experience as excellent or above average.
Eighty six percent of people said that the experience increased their trust in the IRS. The next year, the team added additional functionality and also increased the eligibility to over thirty million Americans.
However, there was a new administration.
Even though the new administration deemphasized the tool, moved it to an obscure location online, and did no promotion, over three hundred thousand people filed their taxes through this direct file tool. Customer satisfaction actually went up to more than ninety four percent, and over two hundred thousand people imported their W-two directly from the IRS, beginning the process towards return free filing and having to fill out less of the forms.
In mid twenty twenty five, after the end of filing season, the administration announced that they would be canceling the direct file program, citing a lack of public interest in the program.
Yet surveys still show that more than seventy percent of households are interested in using a free government run direct filing tool.
Our experience as a country with the first two years of direct file has shown us that it is absolutely possible for the government to build and launch something that users find simple and like using and that builds trust. It had a roadmap to make the whole IRS more efficient. Over time, building that capability could help make the tax system clearer, more efficient, and less time consuming for everyone.
And it also has the potential to achieve something bigger, creating trust in our government.
If something as complicated and as universal as filing taxes can be made simpler, what can't we do?
Mina Hsiang, Shorenstein fellow and former administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, shares her experience launching the IRS’s free tax filing option, what they did to ensure the Direct File pilot was successful, the response from users, and why it’s no longer available to taxpayers.