What is Free File? Not someone sexually attracted to the inexpensive, that's a freephile. Not the potions you start Diablo with, those are free vials. Not a useful new shower pan, that's pre-tiled. Free File is a deal between the government and tax preparation companies like H&R Block for the government to not create its own tax prep software this software could be released for free and the uniformity would benefit tax processing but this would hurtβmaybe destroyβ the tax prepping industry.
The government capitulated... obviously. The government asked for a concession from the tax preppers: offer free tax prep to people in lower tax brackets but clients are marks for siphoning and the poor contain the largest pool of marks so of course these financial advisors did everything they could to hide financially beneficial information from their clients of course Intuit just got in trouble for hiding TurboTax Free File adding code to block it from Google and other search engines.
What is Free File? A capitalist's answer to subverting capitalism their product is antiquated so they anchor down society so it doesn't pass them by multitudes of businessmen halt progress for selfish gain automation frees us from soul-draining work we need to live to pay bills to shysters who nickel and dime us.
In this age of hypercapitalism where entire industries are built upon lobbying the government to make progress illegal the government's solution is to ask these capitalists to sell their product for free.