The high per-return cost is due to two things. The pilot year was 2024 (2023 earnings) so we've only had one year, and it was limited to 13 states.
The rollout year for almost anything is a money loser, and especially would have high per capita costs.
The existing corporate free filing services are limited to poor people, and there are many of us who don't want to be data-mined or risk insiders such as temp worker off shore clerks selling the keys to our house to thieves.

As for the on-going costs, the IRS spent $18.2 billion on operations last year, but doesn't provide breakdowns on the cost of processing 1040 forms. Supposedly, processing the paper forms is a big part of that and the IRS wants to cut down on processing paper.
The IRS still must process every form submitted according to IRS rules whether it comes in the mail, from Intuit, or some DirectFile type program. At some point it all becomes electronic.
The only real overhead of Direct File is the cost of building website pages for us to type in our numbers.

What you said is basically true, but ...

I have mailed in my tax forms in the past, but no way would I "drop it in the mailbox". Mail theft is becoming more common, and the tax forms are a gold mine for mail thieves and identity theft thieves, and you really don't want to be a victim of that.

I think the main value of IRS direct file wasn't whether it's free or not, but that you can do electronic filing and avoid using the mail.
This is what sucks.
What the IRS has done is giving you the choice of using a tax prep software company to get electronic filing and be data-mined, or use the USPS for a less reliable service.

What makes this ironic is the IRS is forcing all but the smallest businesses to set up accounts and file everything electronically, both taxes and reporting of employee W2, 1099's and such.

Yep.
The cost of providing and maintaining infrastructure to a million homes is a very great deal more expensive per kilowatt hour sold than the cost of infrastructure to the large businesses or datacenters.
Also, the very large entities tend to use electricity at a constant rate 7/24, and that allows utilities to use the lowest cost generation without having to ramp up expensive quick response generation. Weather, for example can strongly affect the demand coming from households while having little effect on industrial demand.
Large scale battery installations are going to help solve, or at least ameliorate that problem, hopefully.

Those businesses are the major source of the utilities profits. Although the industries get a lower per kwh rate, it is the businesses in general that subsidize the homeowners rates.
Where the states differ is how much of a ratio there is between the rates due to some states mix of population vs large businesses and the political environment.

One group not mentioned that is always bent over the barrel are the commercial enterprises - small business and retail establishments.

Another way to look at it is that many other lifeforms modify the environment in very significant ways. For example there are the oxygen emitters such as algae and trees, the reef builders, other calcium carbonate sequesters (limestone) and on down to earthworms and people building cities.
Do we have some ethical duty to not do anything even though our effect on the planet is insignificant compared to oxygen emitters, reef builders, etc?
I admit that "everyone else is doing it" is a weak argument, but we're just not that big a deal yet in the planet-modifying game.

I did that - after installing Win 11 I setup a local account for daily use. I also setup another local account I only use for financial stuff. I've always done that.
I didn't delete that Microsoft account, though, because I still use it but learned you don't want to logon to your MS account while logged in to that local account.

I highly recommend uninstalling OneDrive before setting up the local account or doing anything else.
OneDrive has become greedy, and wants to do things you didn't ask for and pretends it didn't hear you say the safe word. Or did I mean to say Microsoft?

I use Hyper-v for all my web surfing or trying out bad ideas.

Another way to avoid all this is to install Windows Server and add the desktop feature. That was my solution for a long time; I used to get it for free, but no longer since I retired.

I read the Collosus article ( ok, most of it) and Alpha school is way cool, but it's not the AI that makes it work so well. It's the guides and leadership.

This sort of school has popped up from time to time with amazing successes for all kinds of students even before AI. Their models vary (all were better than standard public schools), but what they all had in common were charismatic leadership and staff. I taught at one, designed for kids with specific learning disabilities, for a year back in the 1990's. I was amazed at how well it worked.

None of these were scalable with any amount of money because there is not anywhere near enough high-performing people who want to spend their days with children for any amount of money.

I read the Collosus article ( ok, most of). Alpha school is way cool, but it's not the AI that makes it work so well.

This sort of school has popped up from time to time with amazing successes even before AI. Their models vary (all were better than standard public schools), but what they all had in common were charismatic leadership and staff. I taught at one, designed for kids with specific learning disabilities, for a year back in the 1990's. I was amazed at how well it worked.

None of these were scalable with any amount of money because there is not anywhere near enough high-performing people who want to spend their days with children for any amount of money.

I used to be a teacher and that assessment is spot on and well known by all the non-cunt teachers.

We all agreed that the main problem is that there aren't enough admin slots to hold all the "cunts", so the rest of us have to deal with them spending their days sharpening their skills by practicing on the rest of us, and worse yet, the students.
Their intermediate goal seems to be get acknowledged some day as a "real asshole", but they're too ineffectual to get that far.

Other readers can get points for ignorance and/or naivety by suggesting that those types get fired "like they do in business".

Every public library has a stack of surplus books they want to be rid of, hence the annual book sales.
So what they should do is get the author name and book title from the patron, print a cover with those words and some generic picture, and glue that to the cover of one of the surplus books. Give them that.
Make everyone happy.

Inflicting emotional distress while ignoring the owner's pleas to desist violates the three laws of robotics.
Who knew it would begin with our refrigerators.
   

Locations on the west side of time zones have daylight an hour behind the eastern sides; each is always on DST or not relative to the other side.
In my dream world we're all on Standard time and locations that have large seasonal variations in sunrise/sunset times can just adjust school/government/store opening times to suit their local solar times.

The class that plays golf on weekdays wants to have more daylight time at the latter part of the day.
Our opinions are irrelevant.
As for the school opening times, taking care of the children is a job for the tradwife.

The AI instance assigned to you knows how to frame your experiences to eventually obtain the desired effect.

Actually, I just wanted to post in this story so I'll have a link to check back on how this story turned out a year or so from now. My guess is things will be worse, but in a different way.

It appears to me from the supporting sources mentioned in the Committee's letter that they are interested in organized groups that are violating Wikipedia's rules to inject propaganda.

Here's a link that contains some significant detail of what has happened and has some recommendations to restore neutrality.
https://www.adl.org/resources/...

I suspect that this is what is driving the Congressional Committee. What may be happening is the committee is not taking the article linked below as gospel and are gathering their own facts from the source (Wikipedia). I don't know that for sure, but I have to wonder what Congress plans to do about it.

It appears that a small group of possibly paid professionals, communicates closely among themselves, maintains a near constant presence, and has made over a million edits on articles regarding the Middle East. Several have been perma-banned, but we all know how non-effective that is.
the article says the Wikipedia arbitrators (arbcom) are unstaffed and overwhelmed.

There are also less active groups pushing anti-American narratives from Russia and China, some that edit out mentions of LQBTQ existence and so on.

True that. With these tokens you don't even own a tulip when the rug is pulled.

  If we want to compare tokenized securities to the 2007 crash, these tokenized securities sound much more like the over $100 Trillion naked swaps market.

Dr Frank-N-Furter: I ask for nothing.
Riff-Raff: And you shall have it. In abundance!