It's attacking the wrong problems, and will have the same set of problems if it succeeds. The actual root problem here is Grover Norquist + friends (comprising

It's attacking the wrong problems, and will have the same set of problems if it succeeds. The actual root problem here is Grover Norquist + friends (comprising a large part of the republican party), who are opposed to all taxes, under basically all circumstances. Norquist is on record saying that it's GOOD that taxes are overly complicated, because it makes people dislike them more, and trust government less. There's an obvious marriage of convenience between the anti-taxxers and TurboTax, which is why TurboTax is able to hold the whole American tax infrastructure in stasis with seemingly miniscule amounts of contributions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis... Remember, loads of other countries do this easily. Income is easy to track on the government side: they have all of the employment information, and can fill in the blanks easily. Tax day should really just be a chance for you to double check the calculation. It's a political problem, not a technical problem. (Also, what the others have said about regressive taxes is 100% correct.)