Trump administration to end IRS’s Direct File; OSTP taps Dean Ball as AI, emerging tech advisor

The Trump administration has decided to terminate the IRS’s Direct File program, according to a source familiar with the situation, putting an end to the free electronic filing system that congressional Republicans and the tax preparation industry have had in their crosshairs since its creation. Work on Direct File began during Joe Biden’s presidency, bringing together some of the administration’s top technical and product minds and tapping into funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. Providing all U.S. taxpayers with a free filing tool would have put the country in line with most developed nations. But despite what the IRS considered to be a successful launch last year, Direct File’s future was murky after President Donald Trump’s election and the administration’s welcoming of Elon Musk’s DOGE into the government tech world. The pending elimination of the free filing tool was celebrated Wednesday by the makers of TurboTax. Derrick Plummer, an Intuit spokesman, called Direct File “a solution in search of a problem, a drain on critical IRS resources and a waste of taxpayer dollars.” Consumer advocate groups panned the Trump administration’s decision. Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, said in a statement that scrapping Direct File “is almost literally taking money out of our pockets.” Dean Ball, a policy scholar with a focus on the intersection of history, political theory, policy and technology, is joining the Trump administration as a senior policy advisor on artificial intelligence and emerging technology, he announced Tuesday on the social media platform X. Ball said in his post of joining the Office of Science and Technology Policy: “It is a thrill and honor to serve my country in this role and work alongside the tremendous team [OSTP Director Michael Kratsios] has built.” He comes to OSTP from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he has served as a research fellow for the past year. Ball is also the author of an AI-focused blog called Hyperdimensional, in which he has defended the AI Safety Institute and commented on the Trump administration’s terminations of probationary employees, saying the move had unintended consequences. Ball also wrote recently that he is interested in AI being built at the same time that the Trump administration and Republicans “seek to advance theories of a ‘unitary executive’ — the notion that the president exercises the powers granted to him by the Constitution and Congress absolutely.” The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every Monday-Friday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast  on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify and YouTube.