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Elon,
I know your relationship with ProPublica got off to a rocky start when we contacted you about a story we were writing about your federal taxes. You replied with a lone punctuation mark — “?” — and subsequently called the story that mentioned you “a bunch of misleading stuff.”
We can agree to disagree on that story and a lot of other things. But we thought it might be useful to reach out again in light of your role, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Simply put: If you’re trying to identify wasteful practices and spending by federal agencies, you’ll find a wealth of actionable issues that our reporting has surfaced over the past 16 years. You and Vivek noted in your recent Wall Street Journal op-ed on your plans for DOGE that “the federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken.”
Our reporting over the years provides some powerful illustrations of that point. ProPublica’s work on the Navy’s cost overruns and design flaws in its ships is second to none. We recently disclosed how Microsoft boxed its competitors out of providing cybersecurity software to the biggest government agencies, including the Pentagon. (Microsoft defended its conduct, saying in a statement that its “sole goal during this period was to support an urgent request by the Administration to enhance the security posture of federal agencies who were continuously being targeted by sophisticated nation-state threat actors.”)
Perhaps the most immediate relevance of our journalism to your work arises from your reported interest in creating a phone app that most Americans could use to file their taxes.
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We’re trying something new. Was it helpful?
No national news organization has been more focused on this subject than ProPublica. We have thoroughly documented why the United States is one of the only industrialized countries in the world that does not provide free filing to its citizens: Companies like Intuit that make billions of dollars selling tax preparation software have persuaded Congress to block free filing and keep their businesses alive.
I’d encourage you to take a look at the story “Inside TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free.”
You’re a busy person, so I’ll provide a TL;DR version: The tax prep industry has blocked free filing by organizing a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill that is anchored by House Republicans but includes Democrats like Zoe Lofgren, who represents Silicon Valley.
The industry also attracted support from longtime Republican figures like Grover Norquist, who has branded proponents of free filing as “big spenders in Washington, D.C.” who are trying to “socialize all tax preparation in America.”
As you know (or will soon learn if you pursue this agenda), despite decades of resistance, the IRS recently launched a pilot program for free filing. It works pretty well, but it’ll likely remain small scale unless something changes in the current Washington status quo.
That’s where you and Vivek have a historic opportunity.
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