> If they can so easily compute the correct number anyway why continue with the whole charade of making us answer a whole bunch of barely decipherable questions

> If they can so easily compute the correct number anyway why continue with the whole charade of making us answer a whole bunch of barely decipherable questions? You should look up what Intuit and H&R Block lobby for. They spend massive amounts of money to stop the IRS from just sending you a prefilled out form for you to verify. It's called return-free filling. There have been countless bills to introduce this but they always die. The IRS could technically do it easily, but it isn't authorized to by Congress. This is one of those stories that breaks every year or two in major newspapers and people are outraged but it never gets better.