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 th

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.