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‘Shipwreck’ cartoon. Available now at tomgauld.com/shop

Today's links

• Musk steals a billion dollars from low-income Americans and sends it to Intuit: Forcing you to pay Turbotax to send data to the IRS that it already has is the DEFINITION of government inefficiency.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

Musk steals a billion dollars from low-income Americans and sends it to Intuit (permalink)

Let me tell you about the most wasteful US federal government spending I know about. It's a humdinger. You and everyone you know are mired in it for weeks, or perhaps months, every year. It will cost you, personally, thousands of dollars over your lifetime. I'm talking about filing your taxes.

Not paying your taxes. Paying your taxes is fine. It keeps the country running, though not because the government needs our "tax dollars" to pay for things. The government annihilates the money it taxes away from us, and creates new money to pay for programs. The USA needs US citizens' dollars to build highways the same way Starbucks needs its Starbucks gift cards to make lattes – that is, not at all:

https://theglobepost.com/2019/03/28/stephanie-kelton-mmt/

I'm talking about filing your taxes. In nearly every case, a tax return contains a bunch of things the IRS already knows: how much interest your bank paid you, how much your employer paid you, how many kids you have, etc etc. Nearly everyone who pays a tax-prep place or website to file their tax return is just sending data to the IRS that the IRS already has. This is insanely wasteful.

In most other "advanced" countries (and in plenty of poorer countries, too), the tax authority fills in your tax return for you and mails it to you at tax-time. If it looks good to you, you just sign the bottom and send it back. If there are mistakes, you can correct them. You can also just drop it in the shredder and hire an accountant to do your taxes for you, if, for example, you run a small business, or are self-employed, or have other complex tax needs. A tiny minority of tax filers fall into that bucket, and they keep the tax-prep industry in other countries alive, albeit in a much smaller form than in the USA.

In the US, we have a duopoly of two gigantic tax-prep outfits: H&R Block, and Intuit, owners of Turbotax. These companies make billions from low-income, working Americans every year, charging them to format a bunch of information the IRS already has, and then sending it to the IRS on their behalf. These companies lobbied like crazy for the right to tax you when you pay your taxes.

In 2003, it looked like the IRS would start sending Americans pre-completed returns, so H&R Block and Turbotax went into lobbying overdrive, whipping up a "public private partnership" called the "Free File Alliance," that promised to do free tax prep for most Americans. But once the threat of IRS free filing was killed, they turned Free File into a sick joke. Americans who tried to use Free File were fraudulently channeled into filing products that cost money – sometimes hundreds of dollars – to use, a fact that was only revealed after the taxpayer had spent hours keying in their information. Free File sites were also used to peddle unrelated financial products to tax filers, with deceptive language that implied that buying these services was needed to file your return:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free

The big winner from the Free File scam was Intuit, which bought Turbotax in 1993. They made about one billion dollars per year ripping off Americans they'd promised to file free tax returns for. After outstanding work by Propublica, lawmakers and the IRS were finally pressured to create an IRS-based free filing service that would cut Intuit out of the loop. Intuit went on a lobbying blitz without parallel, giving out $3.5m in bribes in 2022 in a bid to kill the Treasury Department's study of a free filing service:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/20/turbotaxed/#counter-intuit

In 2022, nearly every US state attorney general settled their lawsuits against Intuit for the Turbotax ripoff, bringing in $141m:

https://www.agturbotaxsettlement.com/Home/portalid/0

In 2023, the FTC won a case against Intuit over the scam:

https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/09/nine-takeaways-initial-decision-intuit-turbotax-action

But Intut was undeterred. They came back in 2023 with a campaign to say that ripping off American tax-filers was antiracist and anyone who wanted the IRS to make filing free was, therefore, a racist:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

Strangely, no one bought that one. By May, 2023 the IRS had announced its own, in-house free file program:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know

Now, no one is forcing you to use this program. Do you have a family accountant that your grandparents started using in the Eisenhower administration? Just keep going to them. Do you like using Turbotax? Keep using it! Wanna do your own taxes? Here's the forms:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040s.pdf

But if you want to file your taxes for free, and you earn $84,000/year or less, here's the IRS's service:

https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-free-file-do-your-taxes-for-free

Better use it quick, though. Elon Musk has just announced that he's killing it. Yeah, I know, no one elected him. That doesn't seem to matter to anyone, least of all Democrats on the Hill, who are still showing up for work every day and trying to engender a "spirit of comity" rather than screaming and throwing eggs:

https://apnews.com/article/irs-direct-file-musk-18f-6a4dc35a92f9f29c310721af53f58b16

Musk called IRS free file a "far left" program and announced that he had "deleted it." By the way, the median Trump voter's income is about $72k, meaning more than half of Trump voters qualified for free file:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/

(Image: Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Everyone Is Judging AI by These Tests. But Experts Say They’re Close to Meaningless https://themarkup.org/artificial-intelligence/2024/07/17/everyone-is-judging-ai-by-these-tests-but-experts-say-theyre-close-to-meaningless (h/t Usermag)

• CenturyLink nightmares: Users keep asking Ars for help with multi-month outages https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/centurylink-nightmares-users-keep-asking-ars-for-help-with-multi-month-outages/

• Price of eggs rising faster than bitcoin in Trump’s America https://protos.com/price-of-eggs-rising-faster-than-bitcoin-in-trumps-america/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago US government: Your fingerprints have expired! https://web.archive.org/web/20050213034201/https://fictioneer.blogspot.com/2005/02/government-to-immigrant-your.html

#15yrsago International Amateur Scanning League will rescue our video treasures! https://web.archive.org/web/20100213170425/http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/02/international-amateur-scanning.html

#15yrsago Interview with a Nigerian 419 scammer https://web.archive.org/web/20100130161655/http://www.scam-detectives.co.uk/blog/2010/01/22/interview-with-a-scammer-part-one/

#10yrsago Nathan Barley: old comedy turned out to be a documentary about our future https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/10/nathan-barley-charlie-brooker-east-london-comedy

#10yrsago Court has to a law’s diagram tortured sentence structure in order to rule https://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/02/tenth-circuit-forced-to-diagram-congressional-sentence.html">

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Boskone (Boston), Feb 14
  https://schedule.boskone.org/62/

• Picks and Shovels with Ken Liu (Boston), Feb 14
  https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels

• Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis (Jacobin/virtual), Feb 15
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

• Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

• Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Feb 18
  https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing

• Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Picks and Shovels at Another Story (Toronto), Feb 23
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

• Ursula Franklin Lecture (Toronto), Feb 24
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-ursula-franklin-lecture-cory-doctorow-tickets-1218373831929

• Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman (NYC), Feb 26
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

• Picks and Shovels (Penn State), Feb 27
  https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

• Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop (Doylestown, PA), Mar 1
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

• Picks and Shovels at Red Emma's (Baltimore), Mar 2
  https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

• Picks and Shovels with Matt Stoller (DC), Mar 4
  https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

• Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel (Richmond, VA), Mar 5
  https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

• With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University/virtual), Mar 7
  https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

• Picks and Shovels at First Light Books (Austin), Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Picks and Shovels at Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast (Remote), Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal (Chicago), Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• ABA Techshow (Chicago), Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern (Bloomington), Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• Teardown 2025 (PDX), Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

Recent appearances (permalink)

• The Writer's Voice
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2025/02/black-history-month-aaron-robertson-the-black-utopians-also-cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels/

• The threat of big tech oligarchy and why the internet sucks (David Moscrop)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Jfhn5wJ-o

• Elon Musk's Digital Coup and the Future of the Internet (System Crash)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEZPa-YzaUs

Latest books (permalink)

• • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: MLMs are the mirror-world version of community organizing https://craphound.com/overclocked/2025/02/09/mlms-are-the-mirror-world-version-of-community-organizing/

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla