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....The actual work of doing your taxes mostly involves rifling through various IRS forms you get in the mail: W-2s listing your wages, 1099s with miscellaneous income from contract work or one-off gigs, and so on. To fill out your 1040, you gather all these together and copy the numbers in them onto the 1040 form. The main advantage of TurboTax is that it can import these forms automatically and spare you this step.
But here’s the thing about the forms: The IRS gets them too. When Vox Media sent me a W-2 telling me how much it paid me in 2017, it also sent an identical one to the IRS. When my bank sent me a 1099 telling me how much interest I earned on my savings account in 2017, it also sent one to the IRS. If I’m not itemizing deductions (like 70 percent of taxpayers), the IRS has all the information it needs to calculate my taxes, send me a filled-out return, and let me either send it in or do my taxes by hand if I prefer.
This isn’t a purely hypothetical proposal. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Chile, and Spain already offer “pre-populated returns” to their citizens. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan have exact enough tax withholding procedures that most people don’t have to file income tax returns at all, whether pre-populated or not. California has a voluntary return-free filing program called ReadyReturn for its income taxes....
https://www.votwitter.com/2019/4/9/18301943/last-minute-tax-preparation-h-r-block-turbotax
One thing I didn't see in the article... was the cost. Will it cost any more for the gov't to do it? I realize that "free" (as it is sometimes used when gov't is involved) isn't really free... so that's my first question. IF there is no additional cost to taxpayers (and how could there not be?), then I wouldn't have any problem with this bill being killed. I get that lobbyists will fight for their clients, so that their clients won't lose money. And that's OK- to a point. But a true conservative would welcome free-market competition. If the gov't can do it better and cheaper (without passing the "buck" along to tax-payers), then why not let them?
Quote: @pumpf said:
One thing I didn't see in the article... was the cost. Will it cost any more for the gov't to do it? I realize that "free" (as it is sometimes used when gov't is involved) isn't really free... so that's my first question. IF there is no additional cost to taxpayers (and how could there not be?), then I wouldn't have any problem with this bill being killed. I get that lobbyists will fight for their clients, so that their clients won't lose money. And that's OK- to a point. But a true conservative would welcome free-market competition. If the gov't can do it better and cheaper (without passing the "buck" along to tax-payers), then why not let them?
I know as a conservative you have a reflexive distrust of government that matches my distrust of the profit motive, but I don't know how there COULD be a charge. As the article says, the IRS already has this info. It would cost them nothing to pre-populate the majority of returns and make the lives of most Americans much easier. Of course, the TurboTaxes of the world could still make money on those of us who have complicated returns and are looking for the best possible outcome using the various options available to us--itemization, etc.
Quote: @MaroonBells said:
@ pumpf said:
One thing I didn't see in the article... was the cost. Will it cost any more for the gov't to do it? I realize that "free" (as it is sometimes used when gov't is involved) isn't really free... so that's my first question. IF there is no additional cost to taxpayers (and how could there not be?), then I wouldn't have any problem with this bill being killed. I get that lobbyists will fight for their clients, so that their clients won't lose money. And that's OK- to a point. But a true conservative would welcome free-market competition. If the gov't can do it better and cheaper (without passing the "buck" along to tax-payers), then why not let them?
I know as a conservative you have a reflexive distrust of government that matches my distrust of the profit motive, but I don't know how there COULD be a charge. As the article says, the IRS already has this info. It would cost them nothing to pre-populate the majority of returns and make the lives of most Americans much easier. Of course, the TurboTaxes of the world could still make money on those of us who have complicated returns and are looking for the best possible outcome using the various options available to us--itemization, etc.
You nailed it (regarding me)!  And my (sarcastic) answer to your question... is: have you met our government? :p
This seems like a no-brainer to me. I've been saying it for a while now (not here). This project is trivial to solve. The IRS forms are broken down into simple structures that were designed with automation in mind. The forms you get in the mail were created on a computer from a database. It's just a simple secure transfer of data from one database to another of data that doesn't even really need to be converted. I think a team of a handful of people could create this in a year without issue.
well considering the last time the govt tried to create a user interface type website it cost about 2 billion dollars, how could this end up being free or even an affordable solution?
Taxes are imoral and illegal!! Thats my story and im sticking to it!!
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