Part of the reason I dislike giving examples is that people think the argument hinges on the examples. The point of my argument is that notifying the government

Part of the reason I dislike giving examples is that people think the argument hinges on the examples. The point of my argument is that notifying the government of everything (1099-B in this example) as it happens live and settling at tax time with determined calculations sent to you by the government is the same complexity of maintaining your own records throughout the year then notifying and settling at tax time. The key part I'm emphasizing is that the hard part of taxes is collecting the information and knowing what is taxable. Not the calculation. If you think that taxes are hard because you need to multiply line 17 by 0.3 and then take the minimum of line 19 and 20, then we are not discussing the same thing. Again, pretending that businesses maintaining an army of accountants and filing the relevant information for you as part of their service is "free" and "automatic" then we do not see things equivalently. A segment of the population believes that the responsibility is on the government to prove you filed incorrectly. Giving them the authority to collect whatever information they want on you is an issue of privacy. Personally, I'm opposed to businesses sending the government all your information not because I want to make life harder for myself/others at tax time but because I don't believe the information will be used only for taxes. The solar example was meant to emphasize the point that the government can only automate the process if every single purchase is marked and accounted for. Giving them the authority to track all purchases (both digital and physical) or mandating others to record said purchases sets a dangerous precedent. Hopefully we could agree on that.