FIRST REGULAR SESSION
House Concurrent Resolution No. 52
94TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Whereas, a program that is important to the citizens of the United States is in jeopardy as the result of decisions that have been proposed in the United States Congress; and
Whereas, twenty-one of our states that have an individual income tax have implemented an innovative solution to meet the needs of the low-income, disadvantaged, underserved, and working poor taxpayers, many of whom are eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit; and
Whereas, this innovative solution, called the State Free File Alliance, has been developed over the last decade where public need, private corporate citizenship and community-based organizations have worked together in an era of fiscal limits and new challenges; and
Whereas, the State Free File online tax program is based on an agreement reached between the Internal Revenue Service and the American software industry, whereby working poor and other lower-income and underserved families and individuals are able to obtain free electronic tax preparation and electronic filing for their federal and state tax returns; and
Whereas, the program saves state budgets the very high cost of creating an alternate online government tax preparation and filing service. Twenty-one states have each decided to create a Free File Alliance public-private partnership solution, creating Free File programs in their states. This has saved state governments many hundreds of millions of dollars in expenditures, while providing free services to those who need them; and
Whereas, the Internal Revenue Service negotiated the terms of the national Free File Agreement with the software providers, which is the common basis for all the Free File programs in the twenty-one Free File states; and
Whereas, the same Internal Revenue Service program has since developed some significant management and operational reforms to improve the Free File programs, as well as the federal program, and these reforms need to be supported and rigorously implemented, ensuring that Free File is free of sales, marketing, or advertising of any products and services other than a tax return and affirming that no products other than tax returns should be offered or provided through this program:
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-fourth General Assembly, First Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby find that the public and the states rely upon the Internal Revenue Service vetting these companies before holding them out for use through the IRS web site; and
Be it further resolved that the Missouri General Assembly recommends that the new policy of prohibiting sales, marketing, or advertising, or offering products other than tax returns should be encouraged and enforced, consistent with the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration rules governing all federal web sites; and
Be it further resolved that tax return information should not be traded, bartered, rented, shared, or sold, and that the privacy of people's tax return information is strictly protected, with no other use of that data either permitted or possible; and
Be it further resolved that companies participating in Free File should be required to meet the same time-tested federal standards for corporate responsibility and commerciality that are a basic requirement for the government's own purchase of commercial services; and
Be it further resolved that while participating companies should continue to provide free federal tax returns under the national Free File program, the Internal Revenue Service should be directed to encourage those companies to also voluntarily provide free state returns for eligible taxpayers in those states that also have State Free File Alliance; and
Be it further resolved that the Missouri General Assembly urges the United States Congress and the President of the United States to take immediate action on this resolution; and
Be it further resolved that the Chief Clerk of the Missouri House of Representatives be instructed to prepare properly inscribed copies of this resolution for the President of the United States, the President of the U.S. Senate, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Majority Leaders and Minority Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, each member of the United States Congress, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, the Chair and members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, the Chair and members of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on the Treasury, the Chair and members of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Treasury, and Governors of the twenty-one Free File states; and