Trump administration officials are preparing to launch an AI-driven website as a clearinghouse for Americans to get services from the federal government. The functions being discussed for the new website include allowing Americans to obtain and renew their passports and file taxes for free on a simple digital portal.
The website, dubbed America.gov, is still in planning stages, according to six current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter. A multi-agency launch is tentatively planned for the end of September, one current official said, cautioning the timing could slide. Several prominent former members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, installed in key roles across government, are involved with the effort.
Some of the features under deliberation would mark a dramatic reversal for the Trump White House.
The Trump administration last year killed a program launched by the Biden administration that allowed some Americans to file their taxes for free on a government website called Direct File. The discussions about America.gov, have included whether that program could be resurrected, albeit in an altered form, according to two officials familiar with discussions.
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It’s unclear what will be included in the initial launch. One official said one goal was to make it easy for Americans who claim the standard deduction — and therefore have relatively uncomplicated tax returns — to file their taxes without having to go through a tax preparation service like TurboTax.
Another official said the passport feature is a key target for the website. Other departments with “public facing services” are also heavily involved, expanding the scope of input beyond just Treasury and State.
The effort behind the website has not previously been reported. Some Trump administration officials hope the initiative could give the Republican Party a selling point in the upcoming midterm elections. An end-of-September launch, these officials said, could serve Republicans at the ballot box, boosting the case that the Trump administration is working to solve American’s problems.
But an uneven rollout could backfire and underscore Americans’ fears about the administration’s competency.
The aim is for a chatbot feature to be the main way Americans use the website, which the administration intends to be a catch-all digital destination meant to make the user experience of Americans interacting with the government online more cohesive.
The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Treasury Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Former DOGE official and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia’s White House unit, called the National Design Studio, is leading the project. Edward Coristine, another former DOGE operative who goes by the moniker “Big Balls,” is working on the project, according to two officials familiar with the work.
Ultimately, the intention is to house the website at the General Services Administration, which runs several government-wide technology systems. Sam Corcos, former DOGE official and head of technology at the Treasury Department, was deployed to several GSA roles last month, according to FedScoop.
The administration is considering using Login.gov — a government identity proofing system housed at GSA — as a front door to the new America.gov website to verify who is logging on, according to a former administration official and another official familiar with the effort. Corcos has taken a leading role for Login.gov, which the National Design Studio is also working on. The Trump administration recently mandated that agencies use Login.gov on an array of public-facing websites.
This isn’t the first time the White House team has pointed users to a chatbot. The design team’s website for the administration’s new nutrition guidelines prominently featured Musk’s Grok when it first debuted, although Grok is no longer on the website.
Much of the early work of the National Design Studio, mostly focused on administration priorities like the TrumpRx platform and the Trump Gold Card website, suffered from accessibility problems, The Washington Sun reported previously.
Gebbia has long signaled that the team is aiming for more than administration pet projects; he has said previously that he intends to overhaul the federal government’s entire web portfolio. The executive order establishing his team instructed the National Design Studio to work with the GSA to redo the U.S. Web Design System, the style guide for federal government websites.
The sole, full-time federal employee tasked with maintaining that system was put on administrative leave earlier this month, according to two officials familiar with the matter. GSA did not respond to a request for comment.
An AI engineer from the Treasury Department, Ryan Parker, has since written on the design system’s GitHub that he is “taking over maintenance of USWDS.” Corcos is also dispatching Treasury talent to the America.gov work.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has pushed out many of those that stood up Direct File. One of the tech teams behind the service, called 18F, was shuttered completely a few months into the second Trump administration. Another, the U.S. Digital Service, was transformed into DOGE.
If the Trump administration were to offer a free tax filing functionality on the forthcoming website, it would be a massive shift from its current policy.
DOGE leadership discussed potentially offering free tax filing through an app before President Donald Trump took office, The Washington Post reported at the time. But the Trump administration eventually canceled the free, government tax filing service stood up by the Biden administration, pinning the decision on the program’s cost and pointing to low participation rates.
At the time, the IRS said that it was doubling down on its partnership with tax prep companies to offer free options to most Americans, called Free File, which has long been plagued by low uptake.
“There’s a real need for simple, integrated services. We actually built one, Direct File, and people loved and trusted it, but it took careful work,” said Merici Vinton, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who helped launch Direct File as its deputy. “Then DOGE killed it.”
Lawmakers in both parties have expressed interest in reducing the burden associated with tax filing, though many Republicans strongly opposed the Biden-era effort. Nearly 30 House Republicans called Direct File a “threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach” in late 2024, asking then President-elect Trump to trash the service.
The Republican Party’s 2025 tax law created new individual exemptions and benefits that will increase, not decrease, the amount of time required by filers to fill out their taxes, according to Erica York, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank.
“It’s good that Republicans want to make tax filing simpler,” York said. “They should focus their efforts on actually simplifying the tax code itself.”
Several experts expressed skepticism that the Trump administration would go forward with a plan to expedite tax filing online, given its position on Direct File.
“This program did exist, it was overwhelmingly popular and successful, and then it was killed by Elon Musk and Donald Trump,” said Liz Pancotti, vice president of policy, advocacy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think-tank. “Why all of a sudden would their tune change?”
Pancotti pointed to a 28-page Treasury report published last year spelling out in detail why the administration was opposed to the Direct File project.
Americans collectively spend an estimated 6.5 billion hours each year preparing and filing their taxes, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a right-leaning group.
“The tax code isn’t easy, and getting it wrong has real consequences for users,” Vinton told The Sun. “In a moment where the public is already skeptical about AI in government, this could undo trust instead of building it.”
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