4 ms·

I am not corrupt and I say otherwise. The US tax code has a massive amount of complexity and tons of corner cases and grey areas. I wish that were not the case

• csomar 4y ago
  It is true, however, when you are an employee and don't have any side dealings (like freelancing or trading stocks).
  • fisherjeff 4y ago
    Oh absolutely – it just does not extend to every single taxpayer.
    • kelnos 4y ago
      Sure, but the vast majority of taxpayers just have W-2 income, and that's it. Even for many of those who have more, it still can be done automatically (1099nec, 1099misc, 1099r, 1099b, 1099div, 1099int, etc. are all filed with the IRS already). Even if 20% of taxpayers still had to do their own returns from scratch -- which almost certainly would not be the case; virtually no one would have to do them from scratch -- automating it for the 80% would still be incredibly valuable. Even with a manual check/amend/approve step. It would save taxpayers tons of time and billions of dollars of tax-prep fees.
• kelnos 4y ago
  "Susceptible to automation" doesn't mean that it's required that it's done without a manual fixup and approval step. You can absolutely automate the US tax code, and generate perfectly-correct tax returns for a majority of the people who have to file. Automation doesn't have to be perfect for everyone, though, in order to be worhtwhile; it just has to reduce the work people have to do. Even if it couldn't produce a perfect tax return for me, it would still be much easier if all I had to do was (for example), click a few buttons to upload a few tax-deductible donation receipts, enter in the amounts, read through the rest of the return, and click "Accept".