For most people, filing taxes is supposed to be free and easy. Instead, the vast majority of Americans pay a fee to a private tax preparer each year. We owe this annual ripoff to one of the most celebrated and misunderstood practices in American politics: bipartisanship.

Despite all the talk about widening political divides, Congress has approved thousands and thousands of pages of bipartisan legislation over the past decade everything from patent reform to Pentagon budgets to bank deregulation . We dont remember these bipartisan bills as significant achievements for a simple reason. Most of them are terrible legislation, throwing money at corporate interests , often to subvert a genuine public interest.

Last month, in a fit of bipartisan comity, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would solidify corporate Americas control over online tax filing an arrangement already rated by an independent watchdog as one of the IRSs most serious problems. But the handout didnt just materialize out of nowhere. Lawmakers were trying to undo a different bipartisan giveaway from the Obama years a government-backed bonanza for debt collection agencies that targeted the poor. With their recent legislative push, Democrats and Republicans were setting aside their differences, screwing the poor in order to stop screwing the poor.

While you cant tell from the official record nobody voted against the IRS bill the unexpected furor surrounding the legislation has left several Democrats on Capitol Hill privately fuming, setting off an intraparty spat that tells us a lot about how the new House Democratic majority plans to govern or misgovern with their Republican colleagues.

How Private Tax Collection Became A Thing

The drama began all the way back in 2015, when everyone from President Barack Obama to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wanted Congress to approve more infrastructure funding for roads and bridges.

Highway construction doesnt have much to do with the private debt collection industry. Debt collectors contract with creditors to bring in bills that arent getting paid, deploying a variety of tricks and high-pressure tactics to get people to pay up.

As the highway bill moved through Congress, lawmakers searched for a set of pay-fors items that could be used to offset the $300 billion or so that would be spent on infrastructure. Republicans were averse to raising taxes; Democrats were reluctant to cut spending. Together, they settled on a third option: gimmicks.

For much of 2015 , debt collectors had been trying to talk Congress into passing a law letting them go after delinquent federal tax bills. They could already badger people about medical bills and credit card debt why not taxes? After a few months of wrangling, debt collectors hit the jackpot. Their bill would make it into the highway law, with Congress officially estimating that private contracting would ultimately save the government $2 billion over 10 years by collecting older tax debts the IRS had stopped working on.

Everybody knew this was a bad idea. Congress first tried letting private companies collect unpaid taxes under a pilot program approved in 1995. The debt collectors on contract managed to recoup about $3 million for the government but at a cost of $21 million. The initiative was scrapped, but in 2004, Congress told the IRS to try private contracting again, and once again, the agency found debt collectors were less effective than the IRS itself, and the pilot project was dropped.

Debt collectors are almost universally recognized as some of the lowest of lowlifes in American finance. They trick families into paying off the debts of dead relatives and threaten people with all kinds of nasty consequences if they dont pay their own debts. But when people dont pay their tax bills, its usually not because they havent been yelled at enough often they just dont have much money. An accident, a job loss or other personal financial disaster has left them in tough shape, and they put off paying the few thousand dollars they owe to Uncle Sam while they meet other expenses.

There are exceptions, of course. Rich people use fancy accounting tricks and borderline-illegal strategies to avoid paying taxes all the time. But under the highway bill plan, the IRS wouldnt be asking debt collectors to focus on these complex cases, which can require years of litigation just to establish that taxes have not, in fact, been paid. Instead, debt collectors would go after people with uncontested tax bills mostly folks with modest incomes and modest tax bills.