Musk and Ramaswamy Already Brainstorming DOGE Initiatives With New App Concept To Revolutionize Tax Filing
As the Department of Government Efficiency prepares to launch, the duo aims to simplify America’s convoluted tax system, but experts warn significant legislative changes are still needed.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are already looking for new ways to streamline the bloated bureaucracy at Washington before the new “Department of Government Efficiency” opens for business, by developing a new app for Americans to file taxes easily.
Sources close to Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy, who is a former pharmaceutical executive, told the Washington Post that the two have been discussing the creation of a new mobile app that would allow Americans to file their taxes directly with the Internal Revenue Service, free of charge.
“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words,” the DOGE commission posted on X, referring to the complex tax code. “Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year. This must be simplified.”
Those who spoke with the Post on the condition of anonymity, say that the conversations between the newly minted heads of “DOGE” are “highly preliminary,” but reflect the brainstorming among the two after being suddenly handed free reign to transform the federal government and that they are hoping to use business innovations to reduce regulation and government waste.
The chief executive of Code for America, a tech non-profit organization that worked with the IRS to create a web portal that allows users to file through a free file database in about 25 states, Amanda Renteria, told the Post that a similar program could be scaled.
“The IRS has the talent to do it — there’s no doubt. They have the talent, the skills there to do it and they already have half the states ready to go,” Ms. Renteria said.
“Being able to bring in the rest of them doesn’t seem like a big leap — you could file for free everywhere across the country.”
Some Tax Experts say that an app would do much to help ease the burden of complex tax codes enforced by the IRS.
“Those are all things that can’t be made simpler in an app. It would require significant changes to the tax code itself, which is up to Congress — not the IRS, and not the Department of Government Efficiency,” a tax expert at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, Kyle Pomerleau, said.
“The ability to do this seamlessly breaks down fairly quickly.”
