gives Intuit the stink eye

Another 1099 example: For most states Stripe won't issue you a 1099-K if you don't meet both $20K volume and >200 charges. Is Stripe shady?

When you actually understand the system, it makes sense why it is the way it is.

Countries like Estonia prefill the tax filing and they say somewhere above 90% of people don't need to make any changes when they file. Most people file within the first day and get their rebate within less than a week. If you had no significant changes (eg opened foreign bank accounts or sjmjlsr) you likely have no need to change anything. There's little fraud possible as data gathered is good and even less mistakes are possible. No one spends a day on their taxes and few need tla tax advisor for regular filing. This is increasingly common across at least Europe but sadly in few countries does it reach such sophistication yet.

Are you sure the US system works that well?

Isn't that just an escape hatch if you do have additional income to report? The tax office should present it as such. Here, the tax office gets that kind of report from a bank. If I agree that it's correct, all I have to do is sign a prefilled form digitally. Unless I've generated income elsewhere, doing the taxes as an employer literally takes less than 5 minutes.

I'm sure the tax authorities would like argue it is income, if you're making $8K monthly on patreon (e.g. Dwarf fortress creators).

https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/207477063-Taxe...

Which makes me wonder, is there some other way to aggregate donations such that they are gifts?

And “give €5 and get a sticker” might make it a sale, making it subject to VAT, too.