To clarify, the vast majority of US taxpayers that are compensated via W-2 or 1099 are eligible to file under 1040A or 1040EZ, both of which are much simpler an

To clarify, the vast majority of US taxpayers that are compensated via W-2 or 1099 are eligible to file under 1040A or 1040EZ, both of which are much simpler and easier to deal with (and, incidentally, all of the major tax preparers like H&R Block and Intuit offer free versions for those use cases). The portion of that cohort that file 1040 (generally those that make over 100K and have situations that make itemized filing more efficient than taking standard deductions) is pretty small.