RIP for another terrific (and free) Public Service solution initially developed by 18F.
Sadly this was 100% completely expected:
#IRS #DirectFile #IRSDirectFile
https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-tax-returns-free-trump-4bb0bca02fab9b3d06ae6f45ac67b7ab
The Trump administration plans to eliminate the IRS’ Direct File program. That's the electronic system for filing tax returns directly to the agency for free. Word about the decision comes from two people familiar with the move who weren't authorized to publicly discuss the plans and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Users credit it with making tax filing easy, fast and economical. But Republican lawmakers and commercial tax preparation companies complain the program is a waste of taxpayer money because free filing programs already exist. A Treasury Department official hasn't made a decision about the program’s future.
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk posted on his social media site that he has “deleted” 18F, a government agency that worked on technology projects such as the IRS's Direct File program. This led to some confusion about whether Direct File is still available to taxpayers this season. While Musk’s tweet may have intimated that the group of workers had been eliminated, an individual with knowledge of the IRS workforce said the Direct File program was still accepting tax returns. The individual spoke anonymously with The Associated Press because they were not authorized to talk to the press. As of Monday evening, 18F’s website was still operational.
“You can now file your taxes for free with the new IRS Direct File pilot program,” Assemblymember Mia Bonta announced. “California is one of twelve states that allow qualifying taxpayers to file directly with the IRS at no cost, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden.”
https://alamedapost.com/news/file-your-2023-taxes-for-free-with-irs-direct-file/
This week took me to Atlanta and back to moderate two panels at the Competitive Carriers Association’s conference there, with that group of regional wireless carriers picking up my airfare and lodging. This trip also yielded my first Atlanta dateline since a 1998 Washington Post recap of the Electronic Entertainment Expo and added a new transit stored-value card to my collection.
10/16/2023: Startup Tackles Wireless Dead Zones With Balloons, Blockchain, and Cash Payouts, PCMag
After I had closed out my reporting at MWC Las Vegas last month by interviewing two World Mobile executives on the show floor there, fact-checking and actually writing the piece ate up another two weeks.
10/17/2023: IRS Will Offer Free (But Limited) Direct E-Filing Next Year, PCMag
I’ve spent years objecting to Intuit’s rent-seeking strategy of getting governments to cede the tax-prep market to the commercial sector–see, for instance, this 2014 Yahoo Tech column. So I will admit that I wrote this report about the Internal Revenue Service launching a pilot program for direct online tax filing with a certain amount of glee. Intuit PR was apparently not nearly as pleased to read it, leading to the bitter statement that we appended to the post after publication.
10/18/2023: Mozilla ‘Creep-O-Meter’ Gauges the State of Online Privacy: Here’s Where We Stand, PCMag
I got an advance copy of this announcement from Mozilla PR, allowing me to finish and file this Tuesday afternoon in the same temporary working space I’d used to write the IRS post on arriving in Atlanta: the United Club in ATL’s T concourse.
10/18/2023: FierceWireless Keynote Panel: You’ve Built 5G. Now Put It Into
Action, CCA Annual Convention
My first CCA panel had executives with four regional carriers–Darlene Howell of Appalachian Wireless, Slayton Stewart of Carolina West Wireless, and Adriana Rios Welton at UScellular–as well as Ericsson North America’s Surya Bommakanti talking about ways that smaller wireless firms could monetize 5G’s potential beyond getting individual customers to sign up for new wireless plans.
10/18/2023: Smaller carriers talk bigger 5G ambitions, with FWA first, Fierce Wireless
That afternoon, I wrote a recap of my own panel. I had recorded audio of it from my phone, but my attempt to outsource some of the work by having Otter transcribe that recording may have taken more time than I would have needed to play back the YouTube clip at 1.25x speed while typing only the meaningful quotes.
10/19/2023: Developing a Complete eSIM Strategy, CCA Annual Convention
This conversation with three experts in eSIM deployment–Chris Jahr, RiPSIM Technologies; John Myhre, GCI; and Randy Van Buren, Nokia–became an acoustic performance when we learned that the microphones had somehow stopped working. Fortunately, the meeting room we occupied was compact enough for our unamplified voices to suffice.
10/19/2023: Dashlane Diminishes Free Password-Manager Tier, PCMag
I learned about this downgrade of Dashlane’s free tier from an e-mail notice sent to customers Thursday morning–which I received because I had opened a Dashlane account for fact-checking purposes a couple of years ago. I then had two hours between CCA panels to write this post and get lunch, and for once I wrote fast enough to leave myself 55 minutes to eat.
#5GBroadband #Atlanta #CCA #CompetitiveCarriersAssociation #Dashlane #digitalPrivacy #eFileTaxes #fixedWirelessAccess #FWA #Intuit #IRSDirectFile #Mozilla #passwordManagers
MichaelJ
Michael Kohlman
Rich Stein (he/him)
KharyP 💙🟧
Alameda Post
Rob Pegoraro