This piece originally appeared on the ProPublica website.
Last month, we detailed how Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has fought a proposal that could make filing taxes easier and cheaper for millions of Americans.
As we noted, tax activist Grover Norquist and other conservatives have also opposed the proposal, called "return-free filing," which would give many taxpayers the option to receive a pre-filled return that they could simply review, sign and send back, all for free. Return-free filing has been endorsed by many experts and adopted by several European countries.
As it turns out, Norquist has also recently weighed in on the side of the tax prep industry on another issue.
A House bill introduced earlier this year would bar the IRS from offering taxpayers software that would compete with programs like TurboTax. In March, Norquist and others wrote a letter to members of Congress that urged them to support the bill—what they called a "pro-taxpayer, anti-IRS power grab legislation."
At issue is how Americans file their taxes and whether electronic filing can be offered directly through the IRS.