No, they instead lobby to make it illegal for the IRS to offer the tools that would mitigate the complexity.
Intuit didn't invent tax code complexity, but they sure fight like hell to own the results of that complexity.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483065-Intuit-board...
Or requirements to pay more.
> Taxes are just controversial by nature
Yes, but that doesn't mean that anything tax related automatically has no solution, you have to look at the specifics. And in this specific case things could be a bit better for many people.
There's also state-level taxes, where I took a number of deductions such as from renting, which is also a minority, again about a third, and again from investing², so that same third again. I think those two minorities won't share that much overlap, perhaps even enough to get to a majority.
(I should note too that these are criticisms of the complexity of the tax code itself; none of this invalidates the point that the original commenter above this thread started with: that the IRS knows all this and can simply compute a bill, on top of which — if required — alterations can be made. That seems to stand. But while, yes, many people — myself included — take the standard deduction, there's just enough other junk in the taxes that I feel like you can fairly easily wind up hitting one or two complications.)
[1]: https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/fixed-income-advisory-committe... though a bit dated.
²Some states, mine included, do not tax income from US government obligations; this is pretty easy to get into accidentally if you're just doing something like a robo-account (which is how I have this situation). But this information is a PITA to get, because it is not captured in any box on a standardized form.
Did you know that around August/September you can log into your IRS account and download all the forms the government has on you for that year?
They would just have to expose that earlier. Or just make the tax deadline October.
Yes, I'm aware. (That's even the argument you're responding to…)
The point is that there are several credits and deductions; some with with P(it applies to me) of ~30%. The point is not P(a given deduction applies to me), but P(any deduction applies to me), and that that probability, I think, is fairly high. To say "yeah but most people can take the standard deduction" is a true statement, but it ignores where the complexity of taxes is. (Heck, I took the standard deduction, and again, there is information required for taxes that is known to all the relevant authorities — just not me, at least not via any official means. If it's input to the tax code, it should be given a Box on a tax form, a the very least.)
But that's a simpler procedure than forcing them to compute most of what the IRS knows from scratch.
¹But if you want to, that's fine too, it's just not what this thread is about.
Well, people using the tax code to encourage certain moral and political views. Whether that's good or not depends on your political stance, and probably even various between particular deductions/credits.
But I don't think it's relevant. The tax code is however complicated it is. The point is that the government already knows, more or less, all the right answers. Put that information, in bill form, down, and bill the taxpayer; the commenter above you is also attempting allow for adjustments (such as for things the government might not know about, perhaps like a donation) to permit for the cases the government already know about. The question still stands: why can that not be done, thus freeing most people (whose tax situations are simple) from the burden of needing to file using today's system?
To your points about the rules, I think even in a scheme where the government sends a bill, the rules can quite easily change. Most of the rules today fall into either deductions or credits, or how we account for various sources of income. (E.g., normal income vs. capital gains.) That much could stay the same, and then the government can adjust its own accounting.