1. All my incomes are automatically filed. 2. Each month I say "yes this is correct" on the website, and pay immediately via any bank. 3. At the end of the tax year, the system calculates if they own me money automatically, I give it my bank account and in some days I have my return.
It even handles tax deductibles and everything.
An archaic, windows-only Java app to generate pairs of password-protected keys, which then have to be fed back into the system to declare your tax status. And they expire every so often, so you have to track down your old keys from years ago and remember the password. Confused? Just set up a SAT appointment, they'll be with you in... weeks.
Having to declare your tax categorization multiple times per year.
Facturas that companies will only generate for you for a limited amount of time, and complicated questionnaires to fill out if you DO want one so you get the right type. Assuming they'll even give you a factura at all.
I fully admit that I have an incomplete understanding of the system, this is just what I've seen my wife try to deal with. And she's the equivalent of a 1099 so her situation may be more complicated.
Additionally, this funding needs to be set in the context of an agency whose budget has shrank 20% over the last decade and whose staffing is set to further shrink through attrition and retirements. The IRS Commissioner testified that the IRS would have to hire 52,000 employees over the next 10 years just to keep staffing at current levels [1].
Finally, the Treasury has argued that this $80B investment would (conservatively) lead to an additional $700B in tax revenue over the next decade, so this spending ends up being entirely revenue-positive [2].
[1] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/written-testimony-of-charles-p-...
[2] https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Fami...
Edit: since this is Hacker News, I thought it worth pointing out that most of the IRS' software is written in COBOL. I can't think of many things more inefficient and cost-ineffective than continually making bit-part upgrades to 60-year-old software written in a language almost no one knows anymore because of a lack of predictable (human and financial) resources needed to rewrite it.
Yet they do not imply IRS is operating efficiently, as efficiency is left undefined.
If we're talking about social efficiency, the tax code appears massively inefficient to me. I believe the tax code should be redesigned to reduce that inefficiency. That may obviate many IRS needs for resources.
The IRS budget for 2020 was $11.5bln to support $3.42 trillion in tax receipts, so I'm not sure that's inefficient. Could it be more efficient? Sure, but it's not as bad as people like to paint it. For comparison, the Los Angeles Unified School District budget alone for that same year was $15bln.
But the broader issue seems to be that the IRS is really bad at planning, goal-setting, and managing its development lifecycle [1]. They've burned through $5.9B just on modernization projects since 1998, with very little to show for it. Many of those projects, including replacing IMF and CADE (which was supposed to be the modern system that would replace IMF, but which failed), have been paused indefinitely. Clearly replacing these legacy systems is time-consuming work, but any way you look at it, it should not take 30 years (that's how long it would have taken if they accomplish their current goal of retiring the IMF by 2028).
It's not just that development is slow; this is holding back IRS from operating efficiently. IRS employees reportedly have more than a hundred internal applications they have to be trained in and switch between in order to accomplish basic tasks, and they have a huge backlog.
Comparing government agencies' efficiency to private entities' is tricky since they tend to have different goals and constraints, but I'm not sure 87,000 agents is that many considering the number of households and business that have to pay taxes, and the number of non-profits that don't pay taxes but still file financial information.
Why does that matter? No government agency on the planet is run in the most optimal and efficient way; nor businesses or even households. What actually matters is the trend and how it's current efficacy compares to its past.
I'm glad they are at least now trying to have a semblance of customer service awareness.
It's amazing how some folks will be ardently opposed to "defunding the police" ... except for the tax police.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-announces-sweeping-effort-t... (“IRS announces sweeping effort to restore fairness to tax system with Inflation Reduction Act funding; new compliance efforts focused on increasing scrutiny on high-income, partnerships, corporations and promoters abusing tax rules on the books”)
It's like a poor person finally getting Section 8 housing, and then you turn around and accuse them of being wasteful and inefficient with their spending, because they have a house so they clearly aren't as poor as they say.
Also the $80B and 87k agents is slightly overstating what they are actually going to get. See e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insider/2022/10/20/the-reality-....
Is it possible that the IRS lacks the engineering management expertise to build an effective in-house software team? Sure.
Is it possible that they won't spend their money efficiently as a result? Sure.
Is it possible that they'll hire B-grade programmers, because the top people won't want to move to some random suburb in MD to work for $120k/year? Sure.
But to somehow accuse the IRS of having "massive" funding and imply that they are in fact well-supported is just disregarding the facts of recent history.
I won't disagree that their IT woes seem to be in large part due to incompetence, however.
They do have such a portal which does some of the things you list and several other things too.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/business-tax-account
How do we know that your list better matches the most common desired/needed features than the initial implementation by the IRS?
IRS business features:
Sole proprietors with EIN
A sole proprietor who files with an EIN can:
View business balance due
View business tax records
View select digital notices
Request a tax compliance check
View business name and address on file
Give account access to your employees
Register for clean energy credits (if eligible)
An individual partner or shareholder with access can:
View business balance due
View business tax transcripts
View business name on file