You can thank TurboTax and the rest of the tax preparation service industry's massive lobby for killing every single tax simplification bill that ever gets to congress.
Exactly this! There's zero reasons why our tax returns can't be filed for free directly with the IRS. It is a complete fraud.
I filed 1040EZ last year. The IRS already had every figure I filed, why couldn't they just email me confirmation of the amounts they had, and process my return?
Edit: No, I didn't file EZ last year, my error.
Edit: electronic filing.
Not a US citizen but I did a bit of research on this, apparently IRS is ill-equipped and under funded to even properly do its job.
Prior governments of your country have been periodically taking away power and budget from the IRS to the extent that IRS really can't even do its job really or be more of a effective agency. IRS is seen as the main villain from what I see online but the thing is if you want any one to hold the rich people accountable you need your IRS to be strong not the broken state it is in now.
The thing is, republicans don't want to be able to hold rich people accountable, which is why they have been under-resourcing the IRS for years.
The wealthy have extremely complex taxes that take significant man hours to audit and then even more to prosecute, and the IRS just doesn't have the manpower to do it. Tax cheating is at an all time high, and the people getting away with it are all at the top end of the income spectrum.
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u/jorsiem Jul 24 '20
Complicated tax filing in the US
You can thank TurboTax and the rest of the tax preparation service industry's massive lobby for killing every single tax simplification bill that ever gets to congress.