It is closed once your balance goes down to zero but only after a certain length of time to allow for these late tax refunds to be applied. Before these off season stimulus payments started the account would be closed quickly but then the IRS sent stimulus payments to closed accounts and people got angry the refunds were in limbo for months until the bank & IRS figured out how to send payments to these closed accounts. So the bank allowed the card to remain active longer for these rogue payments to be deposited and other people got mad like you ... there is no pleasing everyone all the time it seems.
The best option is to never use a pre paid debit card ever if you don't like the restrictions. Find an alternate way to pay the TT fees or if you qualify use one of the IRS FREE FILE options you can get here :
https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free
