The leaders of President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have discussed trying to create a mobile app for Americans to file their taxes free with the Internal Revenue Service, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Trump last week tapped billionaire Elon Musk and former pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the “DOGE” panel and gave them two principal mandates: cut government spending and reduce federal regulations. The leaders of the group have also discussed overhauling the tax system to let Americans file their taxes through a mobile app, viewing it as an opportunity to improve how millions of taxpayers interact with the federal government, the people said. This idea is not viewed as central to the commission’s work but could still emerge as a goal, although what form its recommendations take still remains unclear.

These conversations, which people close to the commission described as highly preliminary, reflect the extent of the brainstorming occurring among the Silicon Valley elites suddenly handed political power about how to transform the federal government. Musk and Ramaswamy have championed their effort as a historic opportunity to unleash American business innovation by reducing regulation and government waste, but critics of both parties have said the effort often reveals an ignorance about work already done to try to solve problems in government.

For instance, Democrats have long sought to reduce the power of private tax filing companies, such as Intuit, by creating a government tool to allow Americans to file taxes. The Inflation Reduction Act, one of President Joe Biden’s signature economic policy measures, created the first-ever free file portal for Americans to fill out their taxes. This year, the first one the system was up and running, more than 100,000 taxpayers used the pilot program according to the Treasury Department. Republicans generally opposed that effort as giving more power to the IRS, though.

Code for America, a tech nonprofit that assists the government, worked with the IRS to enable Americans to file their federal and state taxes through the free file database in about half of the states. Amanda Renteria, Code for America’s CEO, said the Biden administration undertook a smart and careful process to make sure the system was effective for its users, working out the kinks on a small scale. But she also expressed confidence that those successes could now be built upon to provide free online tax filing for all Americans.

Tax experts have long said such a system could provide particularly large benefits to low-income Americans, who often do not claim thousands of dollars in annual benefits because they cannot afford a tax preparer who would help them file.

“The IRS has the talent to do it – there’s no doubt. They have the talent, the skills there to do it and they already have half the states ready to go,” Renteria said. “Being able to bring in the rest of them doesn’t seem like a big leap – you could file for free everywhere across the country.”

Still, tax experts point out that the challenge in creating a mobile app for taxpayers rests not in creating software, but in addressing the complexity of the tax code. Musk and Ramaswamy have publicly criticized the sprawling tax laws.

“In 1955, there were less than 1.5 million words in the U.S. Tax Code. Today, there are more than 16 million words,” the DOGE commission posted on X, the social media network Musk owns. “Because of this complexity, Americans collectively spend 6.5 billion hours preparing and filing their taxes each year. This must be simplified.”

But changing that would require an act of Congress, leaving unclear how the DOGE organization could resolve the biggest obstacle to a new free filing system.

Kyle Pomerleau, a tax expert at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, pointed out that a mobile app would not be able to know how much small business owners spend on expenses, or how much of the year a child lives with one parent as opposed to the other – inputs that are necessary to produce a federal tax return.

“Those are all things that can’t be made simpler in an app. It would require significant changes to the tax code itself, which is up to Congress – not the IRS, and not the Department of Government Efficiency,” said Pomerleau, who supports the idea of simplifying the tax filing process. “The ability to do this seamlessly breaks down fairly quickly.”

Some conservatives have had other reservations about a free mobile app for Americans to file their taxes. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a group that opposes tax hikes, said he has long been concerned about the idea that the government will “do your taxes for you” because it represents an invasion of privacy. He also said the more information the government gets out of taxpayers, the more taxpayers will probably ultimately pay.

“This smells a little like the government doing your taxes for you – and the challenge with that is they’re always pretty sure they’ll get more money out of you than they otherwise would,” Norquist said.

Still, allies of Musk and Ramaswamy are optimistic that the business executives could make it easier for Americans to file their taxes.

“At church on Sunday, giving is easy, and you know it’s well spent. In Washington, giving is hard, and your money is often wasted,” said James Fishback, co-founder of Azoria Partners, an investment firm. Fishback has long been close with Ramaswamy. “DOGE has the potential to rebuild trust by pushing for a total reset of how taxes are collected, spent and overseen.”

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