It doesn’t take much for an American residing abroad to have complicated taxes. I work a salaried job and am trying to save for retirement and that puts me into the complicated bracket because of the rules on pension taxation in my country of residence vs the US. Our options for investment are very limited, compared to every other resident of the country. My local brewery was doing a grassroots investment campaign and I couldn’t even buy £20 worth of shares to support them because as a US person that was forbidden.

Yeah, while you could argue that the IRS should do pre-filled electronic returns, the reality is that if you have a W2 and a couple 1099s, doing your taxes is pretty straightfoward.

As you say, it's more complex income sources and potentially deductions that lead to big accountant bills.

Or simply the fact of living overseas.

And you mention 1099s, i.e. self employed. Well, if you run a sole proprietorship as an expat, you still have to file US self-employment tax forms, and there are also QUARTERLY filing requirements with penalties for non-filing.

Or you need to get the paper certifying that your country has a totalization agreement with the US (not all do).

And since 1099 isn't a thing in EU, you have to file the US 'small business' tax form, which is actually 3-5 forms.

so as an expat, even what should be very straight forward turns into a massive mess.

Sure. Yes, I was assuming a US citizen/resident working for an employer who has income from a few basic sources and is taking standard deduction--which actually describes a lot of people. (And I was mentioning 1099s mostly in the context of a brokerage account.)

Well, I am glad to stand corrected.

Most of my knowledge of it comes from all the threads about Intuit's and H&R Block's lobbying regarding what IRS could and could not do to simplify tax filling.

If you don’t me asking. If it is as straightforward, what actually is the point in said lobbying?

Many people don't realize it's straightforward to fill out a 1040 form and assume they need to buy specialty software or go to a tax preparation place like H&R Block. Naturally they're not going to tell them otherwise.