Let's say you sold your car and deposited the money in your account. The IRS won't have details about the sale and neither will your bank. They will know the amount, but it is incumbent on you to report information if this sale represented a capital gain. In all likelihood it wasn't, but the government doesn't have a way of knowing this. If you get audited, someone will probably ask where the money came from and it would be up to you to furnish receipts in order to prove it.
Capital gains from real estate sales are not automatically reported.
Public securities (stocks, ETFs, crypto, etc) are a small fraction of overall capital gains by $.
What percent of Americans buy and sell a property within a year? I bet it is pretty low.
> stocks
All the major players report this information.
> ETFs, crypto
The vast majority of people use exchanges like Coinbase and Binance. These already report.
So I'm not sure what your point really is. That there are edge cases? No shit. No one is even arguing against that. The argument for return free filing is that the vast majority of people will benefit from the system. Even if there are mistakes it is easier to look over something and correct it than do everything from scratch. The people that won't majorly benefit from this likely already have more than enough wealth to pay someone to do their taxes already and honestly I'm not concerned about them.
Don't let perfection get in the way of massive improvement.
> You can sell your primary residence and be exempt from capital gains taxes on the first $250,000 if you are single and $500,000 if married filing jointly. (once every 2 years)
> You can add your cost basis and costs of any improvements that you made to the home to the $250,000 if single or $500,000 if married filing jointly.
So I'll change my question:
What percentage of home owners are profiting >$250k (single)/ >$500k (married)? What percent of them do that more frequently than a 2 year period?
I'm willing to bet that these numbers are still very low. That's the entire point. I'm sure there's nuance I've missed as I'm not an expert. But my entire point isn't about specifics, it is that your argument against this system is about edge cases. If you can prove that these aren't edge cases, I'll actually side with you. If not, I still see return free filing as an extremely beneficiary policy to the vast majority of Americans, and especially to those with the least income. I already know that 90% of households take the standard deduction, so you're going to have to make some substantial claims.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/capitalgainhomes...
> The Tax Reform Act of 1986 required anyone responsible for closing a real estate transaction, which may include the escrow agent, title company, or attorney, to report a real estate sale or exchange to the IRS on Form 1099-S. In addition, they were required to furnish a statement to the seller of the gross proceeds of the sale. In 1998, with the passage of the Tax Payer Relief Act of 1997, an exception to this reporting requirement was allowed.
> If the sale price of your residence is $250,000 or less ($500,000 or less for married sellers) and you have lived in the property, as your principal residence, for the last two out of the last five years, your closing agent will not be required to file Form 1099-S with the IRS. The gross proceeds of the sale need not be reported to the IRS if these conditions are met.
> Be sure that your closing agent has your written confirmation that your sale is exempt from the IRS reporting rule. Most closing agents have a form, called a “Certification for No Information Reporting on the Sale or Exchange of a Principal Residence” which you will you be asked to sign at closing. The form will ask for your seller information, social security number, address, and certification that you have met the exemption requirements.
https://sandygadow.com/will-my-escrow-agent-have-to-report-m...
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if the IRS could already have a 90+% success rate for 80+% of people. It seems like the real issues would be in the very rich who can take advantage of many loopholes or the average person when big life events happen (things like death, marriage, and birth, though most of this could be automatically reported as well but easier to fall through the gaps).
Maybe I misunderstand, but it doesn't seem like the IRS needs any additional information than I have presumed it already has. This information is at least all known by the fed, so it doesn't seem like a data leakage. And I'm someone that highly cares about privacy.
I suspect that the real pushback for return free filing is from 1) tax filers like Turbo Tax who would lose a lot of business and 2) the ultra wealthy as RTF would put pressure to simplify the tax code and reduce the number of loopholes.