3 ms·

The craziest part is that the IRS verifies this information against their records and will investigate you if things don't match up. If there's a source of trut

by Liquix 4y ago

The craziest part is that the IRS verifies this information against their records and will investigate you if things don't match up. If there's a source of truth each citizen's submission must align with, why not just use that to begin with and investigate people whose assets/deposits exceed their expected income?

twoodfin 4y ago
To cover the breadth of US tax law, including provisions that impact large swaths of ordinary Americans, the IRS would have to collect a lot more data than they do today. More than likely this would be politically infeasible: Look at the uproar over their (now deferred) attempt to collect information on relatively low-dollar Venmo accounts.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  The number of people that it would work for would easily justify the cost of the IRS sending out prepared taxes. That some small sliver of people have complicated taxes or want to itemize their expenses is not a good reason to complicate the activity for the majority that have straightforward taxes. And then if you want to simplify, just eliminate deductions altogether (and shift brackets to compensate). Eliminating top bracket income for the mortgage interest on a huge house is pretty regressive, for example.
  - twoodfin 4y ago
    That’s my point: Americans spend a ton of time doing their taxes because taxes are complicated, not because the IRS doesn’t pre-transcribe their W-2. If all you need is the 1040-EZ, you can do that in 20 minutes.
    - maxerickson 4y ago
      Right, the point is that we can and should get that down to 5 minutes. It's just stupid lobbying and weird ideology to insist that the IRS stay out of the preparation business. And then once they start doing it, they can probably figure out how to do it for a larger and larger percentage of people over time (and the tax code can be adjusted to make it work better in cases where it makes sense).
      - twoodfin 4y ago
        I think you’re unintentionally making the weird ideologues’ point for them: The burden of taxes isn’t the 5, 10, 20, 200 minutes you spend preparing them, the burden is the taxes. Getting excited about saving taxpayers 15 minutes, and trading off $thousands of deductions for a few more minutes, suggests that you’re optimizing for obscuring the primary burden (the cost of government) rather than reducing it. It’s the weird ideologues who typically want an extremely simple system. But it’s very hard to make such a system as progressive as what we have today without reintroducing complexity.
        maxerickson 4y ago
        Why would people trade off deductions? I'm pretty sure that the serious proposals for IRS preparation are for them to pre-fill what they have and are open to the filer amending that or preparing their own return. We should anyway eliminate exemptions and deductions and shift the brackets to compensate. It's also sort of silly to go on about making sure that people understand the "burden", when government should obviously be restricting itself to things that are a net benefit to society. Of course there will be disagreements about the value of a given activity or service, but the notion that government must be a burden is pretty backwards.
        DangitBobby 4y ago
        It is both the time and the taxes that are a burden. And there's always gonna be some people out there keeping track of all the dumb shit we are being taxed for but not changing it, just like today.
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      1040EZ was discontinued in 2018.
    - rolenthedeep 4y ago
      If all you need is the 1040-ez (as most people do) then it's trivial to automate with records that the IRS already has. Then you're given the opportunity to review and correct your automatic taxes like other countries already do. This is already what happens, except you're paying a third party for the privilege of copy/pasting some fields from one form to another. America isn't unique and special, solutions to problems in other countries aren't magically impossible here. The reason you think this is because you've been tricked into thinking our tax code is complex by necessity. In reality, things are only this bad because TurboTax and other tax preparing companies have lobbied for more complex tax codes and less access to free automated filing. If an independent company can produce software to file your taxes and charge you $150 for it, there's absolutely no reason the IRS can't do the same thing for free.
  - Beached 4y ago
    it isn't only itemizing for general deduction. there are a LOT of people who claim other tax incentives outside of that. I have claimed something almost every year in the past 15 years. and almost every friend I have does the same. if you are self employed or have a home, it is super common to claim items on taxes that the IRS doesn't know about currently. but yes, they should just eliminate all deductions and shift how much you are taxed to compensate
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      Most years, everything on my taxes is based on a form some financial institution sent me. Investments info, mortgage info, salary info, 401k/IRA info, charitable contributions. Why is all this being sent to me and not the IRS? If it is also being sent to the IRS, why isn’t the IRS sending me a pre-filled “return” that I can simply send back with a “Agree” checked? Yes, there are years I have things that are unexpected/unusual. I’m happy to add that stuff to the above pre-filled form and submit it. But it’s absolutely infuriating that every April I have to spend a day sorting through a pile of paperwork and stress about whether or not I’ve forgotten something or gotten something wrong (or, these days, pay a CPA to do it for me, even thought there’s absolutely nothing unusual about my tax situation).

by Liquix 4y ago

twoodfin 4y ago

To cover the breadth of US tax law, including provisions that impact large swaths of ordinary Americans, the IRS would have to collect a lot more data than they do today. More than likely this would be politically infeasible: Look at the uproar over their (now deferred) attempt to collect information on relatively low-dollar Venmo accounts.

maxerickson 4y ago
The number of people that it would work for would easily justify the cost of the IRS sending out prepared taxes. That some small sliver of people have complicated taxes or want to itemize their expenses is not a good reason to complicate the activity for the majority that have straightforward taxes. And then if you want to simplify, just eliminate deductions altogether (and shift brackets to compensate). Eliminating top bracket income for the mortgage interest on a huge house is pretty regressive, for example.
- twoodfin 4y ago
  That’s my point: Americans spend a ton of time doing their taxes because taxes are complicated, not because the IRS doesn’t pre-transcribe their W-2. If all you need is the 1040-EZ, you can do that in 20 minutes.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    Right, the point is that we can and should get that down to 5 minutes. It's just stupid lobbying and weird ideology to insist that the IRS stay out of the preparation business. And then once they start doing it, they can probably figure out how to do it for a larger and larger percentage of people over time (and the tax code can be adjusted to make it work better in cases where it makes sense).
    - twoodfin 4y ago
      I think you’re unintentionally making the weird ideologues’ point for them: The burden of taxes isn’t the 5, 10, 20, 200 minutes you spend preparing them, the burden is the taxes. Getting excited about saving taxpayers 15 minutes, and trading off $thousands of deductions for a few more minutes, suggests that you’re optimizing for obscuring the primary burden (the cost of government) rather than reducing it. It’s the weird ideologues who typically want an extremely simple system. But it’s very hard to make such a system as progressive as what we have today without reintroducing complexity.
      - maxerickson 4y ago
        Why would people trade off deductions? I'm pretty sure that the serious proposals for IRS preparation are for them to pre-fill what they have and are open to the filer amending that or preparing their own return. We should anyway eliminate exemptions and deductions and shift the brackets to compensate. It's also sort of silly to go on about making sure that people understand the "burden", when government should obviously be restricting itself to things that are a net benefit to society. Of course there will be disagreements about the value of a given activity or service, but the notion that government must be a burden is pretty backwards.
      - DangitBobby 4y ago
        It is both the time and the taxes that are a burden. And there's always gonna be some people out there keeping track of all the dumb shit we are being taxed for but not changing it, just like today.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    1040EZ was discontinued in 2018.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    If all you need is the 1040-ez (as most people do) then it's trivial to automate with records that the IRS already has. Then you're given the opportunity to review and correct your automatic taxes like other countries already do. This is already what happens, except you're paying a third party for the privilege of copy/pasting some fields from one form to another. America isn't unique and special, solutions to problems in other countries aren't magically impossible here. The reason you think this is because you've been tricked into thinking our tax code is complex by necessity. In reality, things are only this bad because TurboTax and other tax preparing companies have lobbied for more complex tax codes and less access to free automated filing. If an independent company can produce software to file your taxes and charge you $150 for it, there's absolutely no reason the IRS can't do the same thing for free.
- Beached 4y ago
  it isn't only itemizing for general deduction. there are a LOT of people who claim other tax incentives outside of that. I have claimed something almost every year in the past 15 years. and almost every friend I have does the same. if you are self employed or have a home, it is super common to claim items on taxes that the IRS doesn't know about currently. but yes, they should just eliminate all deductions and shift how much you are taxed to compensate
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    Most years, everything on my taxes is based on a form some financial institution sent me. Investments info, mortgage info, salary info, 401k/IRA info, charitable contributions. Why is all this being sent to me and not the IRS? If it is also being sent to the IRS, why isn’t the IRS sending me a pre-filled “return” that I can simply send back with a “Agree” checked? Yes, there are years I have things that are unexpected/unusual. I’m happy to add that stuff to the above pre-filled form and submit it. But it’s absolutely infuriating that every April I have to spend a day sorting through a pile of paperwork and stress about whether or not I’ve forgotten something or gotten something wrong (or, these days, pay a CPA to do it for me, even thought there’s absolutely nothing unusual about my tax situation).