Asking the IRS to pre-fill your taxes is totally reasonable. What's crazy is that they have all this information and have already computed how much tax I owe, but won't tell me what that is, and if I get it wrong or forget something then I'm both legally and financially liable.

You can still get a second opinion with pre-filled taxes.

> What's crazy is that they have all this information and have already computed how much tax I owe

This is not really accurate. If you're a typical employee, IRS has a pretty good idea of your income, which is just one of the many factors that goes into calculating your tax.

In particular, the IRS doesn't independently know most of the things that could cause you to get tax deductions, like whether you got married since last year, or you moved out of your parents' house and started living on your own, or you're taking care of a child, or you had self-employment expenses, or you bought textbooks for your college classes, or you donated to charity, or you paid expensive medical bills, etc.

> the IRS doesn't independently know most of the things that could cause you to get tax deductions

The vast majority of taxpayers take the standard deduction and do not itemize, so in real practical terms this is an extremely irrelevant straw man.

(https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-standard-....)

(https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2023/02/15/itemiz...)

To be fair, I said "how much tax I owe," not how much tax you (or others) owe.

I don't have any creative deductions. And I expect many others only have one or two "interesting" deductions to add. I haven't actually measured this but I honestly expect >95% of what I enter into my tax return is information they already have.

Do they know how much you'll spend on sales tax for a given tax year? How much you'll pay out of pocket for health expenses? Do you?

These are not "interesting", but nearly everyone has 'em, and the IRS cannot know, without bending space time, how much you'll owe because of those deductions (assuming an itemized deduction, though they're still in play either way because they can help tip the balance between taking a standard or itemized deductions).

> assuming an itemized deduction

Only 13% of all US federal tax filings each year itemize deductions. That means it would help the vast majority of filers and not harm the rest in any way whatsoever. Weird thing to be against if someone isn't misanthropic.

I was pointing out to the GP that the IRS cannot know the final amount due because of the potential for some very common types of deductions.

I wasn't disagreeing with the idea of pre-filling tax return data.

But just imagine if your starting point for your taxes was "here's 95% of your information already filled out, got anything else to add?" Wouldn't that be even easier? Nobody is saying you can't itemize if you want, but for the vast majority of taxpayers the standard deduction is a larger deduction than itemizing and far lower risk of audit.

It'd be fantastic, and I agree. I never said otherwise.

I was simply offering examples of "normal" deductions that can easily change what you owe, and how those deductions aren't as uncommon as the person I was commenting to would have you believe.

Exactly, then I should be able to see that my tax calculations include only my salary and I can fill in rest of the things to get additional deduction. Infact everyone would be able to see what IRS knows and what it doesn't and deductions taken into account etc. How is it not better?

They also don’t know about the adjusted cost basis for those RSUs sold to pay for the ordinary income tax of an RSU grant.

The liability for making a simple honest mistake is greatly overstated. In most cases the IRS sends you a letter explaining the mistake and asks you to send the additional payment (or sends you the additional refund) and if you address it in a timely manner there’s no penalty or anything.

The meme about “oh I forgot to carry the one now I’m going to jail” is just Internet hyperbole.

Often times you correct it with more paper work. One year, my foreign tax deduction didn’t get filed for some reason (I was doing my own taxes by hand and sending in the forms), so I was hit with a huge tax bill of $30k or so. Then I found out I handled my non-resident wife wrong, so amend 1040X wait for ITIN, etc…it was kind of a mess. I wound up ahead, the IRS owing me instead. They were quite courteous about it on the phone.

This is my experience as well. The IRS generally knows that mistakes happen, and they generally don't really seem interested in criminally punishing small things. Normally they assess a small penalty payment at worst, and set you up with a payment plan if you don't have the money.

They will tell you what they have. You can request your tax records including what they think you owe and what you earned.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript

But can I do that before I file taxes? Maybe I've misunderstood but I thought this is only available after I file taxes: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/transcript-availability

I've always wondered if there's some intentional poker going on here: if the IRS shows you your report first, and you realize they've made a mistake to your advantage, you're almost certainly less likely to report it...right?

You should be free to get both their opinion for free - and a second opinion if you really want to pay for it, surely?

Grover Norquist?

The IRS already "does" your taxes.

They internally compute what you owe, and if what you submit doesn't add up, they dig deeper.

That's really not true and it's important to understand the distinction.

They know a lower bound on how much income you should be reporting. They have no idea how many dependents you have, houses you sold, charity you donated, foreign income you made, etc etc etc. There are hundreds of other things they don't know which massively affect what you owe.

If they got a W-4 for you and you don't report it, yes you're f'd. But they in no way know how much you owe.

> They have no idea how many dependents you have, houses you sold, charity you donated, foreign income you made, etc etc etc.

Generally speaking, the government does in fact know exactly what houses you sold and dependents you have. Those are both matters of public record and registered with the state. How do you think cities assess property taxes? And if you think that charitable donations and foreign income make any kind of dent for 99% of all taxpayers, you're living in a very weird bubble. 87% of all filings take the standard deduction in any given year for a reason.

> registered with the state

The government is not a single entity. States do not funnel this information to the IRS.

> Those are both matters of public record

In my state (Missouri) house sale prices are not public record.

> 87% of all filings take the standard deduction in any given year for a reason

Yes I think everyone would be enthusiastic about submitting taxes that are 87% accurate.

>In my state (Missouri) house sale prices are not public record.

That's a weird wrong thing you think. Visit https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/data/address-search/index.cfm and put in any address in St Louis MO and you'll see who owns it, when it sold, how much it sold for, how much property tax they owe, the bounds of their lot, and more.

Here's an example, randomly selected from google maps: https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/data/address-search/index.cfm?par...

This is standard.

> Yes I think everyone would be enthusiastic about submitting taxes that are 87% accurate.

I'm going to ignore this obvious bad faith trolling.

Whether or not house sale prices in Missouri are in the public record depends on the county. You picked a county where they are. In some counties they re not.

That's tax assessed values, not necessarily the actual sale amounts. The assessed value of my house has never been the same as my actual purchase price.

> That's tax assessed values, not necessarily the actual sale amounts.

Scroll like 12.5 more pixels. The next section immediately below tax assessed value says "Sales Data" and includes a column for "Sale Price".

Having some data isn't the same as having all the data.

Tell me more about how having all of the data for most people and almost all of the data for the rest is like having no data at all for anyone. Because I'm struggling to see the connection to that last step.

The fact remains through all of this that the IRS does actually have _all_ of the needed information for the vast majority of tax filings.

It's an extremely bad faith reach to be like "but maybe I sell my house for bags of paper cash (no banks) every year without telling anyone but want the IRS to know about it" and pretend like that's not an absolutely obnoxiously absurd argument against doing something that would help nearly everyone in the country.

Because, let us be absolutely clear, the vast vaaast majority of everyone in the country live in other states, do report sales even if they do live in those states this person is making the claim about, don't sell or buy houses all that often if at all, and especially don't do it without involving a reporting financial institution.

I'm not saying anything about the IRS system, I'm just saying the federal government definitely doesn't have all household sales data for all residential sales. It's not required filing in Missouri and several other states.

The federal government likely has zero clue what I spent to buy my house. They could probably find it if they bothered looking hard enough, but it wasn't directly reported anywhere with the government, especially federally.

I'm totally not against having a simple filing system though and agree for most people for most years it would be way simpler. Just pointing out a spot where you're incorrect on the federal government, especially the IRS, knowing everything. You're getting really angry at me about things I've never said. Probably time to calm down my dude.

I'm not angry at you. Sorry if it came across that way. I was referencing the other comments upthread not made by you that seem like a bad faith troll.

The arrogance in just assuming you know this with confidence after a few seconds of googling is truly something.

Here, I have a link of my own: https://www.attomdata.com/news/most-recent/do-you-know-what-...

That site may use voluntary reporting or MLS records, but nobody is under any obligation whatsoever to report the price for private sales.

Dunno what to tell you, friend. Take it up with your local office of revenue, I guess. The government website is right there providing all the information I said and more. And if there are ever limitations relating to "the general public", the IRS isn't a member of that category.

AND, your bank and investment agencies definitely report everything you put into them. So now you must also be talking about non-disclosed property sales for _cash_, as in paper bills and coins under the mattress. Doing a lot of that, are you?

But tell me more about what percentage of all federal filings you believe would be affected by undisclosed property sales.

Just so you know, yiure doubling down on being wrong about this site having the data here.

https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/data/address-search/index.cfm?par...

How much did the current owners buy it off the church for?

And sure, some agency might have some notification about some wire transfer that happened. It doesn't mean they know what it related to. It doesn't mean the IRS has any knowledge of it.

The IRS probably didn't know and wouldn't know about the kids I have until I told them about it. Sure the federal government would have theoretically known about it from telling the Social Security Administration (not necessarily a requirement!) and later applying for a passport, but the IRS wouldn't automatically know these things. If I told your cousin something do you instantly know it? Federal agencies suck at sharing information.

I do agree we can simplify filing income taxes for the vast majority of people. I agree most of the US doesn't have a kid every year, isn't in a non-reporting real estate state, don't do a ton of stock day trading, isn't donating half their income to charities, etc. But you shouldn't assume the IRS truly knows all your tax situation, and I'd recommend still looking over that simplified return if you've had an odd year if we ever get there.

> Dunno what to tell you, friend.

The adult thing would be "Wow I guess I had no idea what I was talking about".

> Yes I think everyone would be enthusiastic about submitting taxes that are 87% accurate.

This wouldn't change accuracy, if anything it might increase accuracy by simplifying it for the vast majority of filers. Nobody is saying you wouldn't be able to file just like you do today, but being able to just review a card of what the government already knows and OK'ing if right would make it massively simpler for 87% of tax filers. You could still have fun spending hours filling out several forms for your odd tax situation.

In my experience people really love the "The IRS already knows how much you owe" meme and you'll never get much more than downvotes for clarifying the truth of it.

In a better world our taxes could be simpler, but for now let's do our taxes the way they do need to be done.

Most people have the same filing status and number of dependents as the previous year, just have W2 and 1099 income already reported to the IRS, and take the standard deduction. For most people, they can tell you what you owe. If it's wrong, you can tell them your dependents or filing status changed and get a new form. If you have a weird situation the IRS doesn't know about, you can still do your own taxes, but that's not most people.

> Asking the IRS to do your taxes is like asking the fox how to guard your henhouse.

Remember, the IRS is already computing your taxes behind the scenes based on all the information they have.

If you report an answer different from what they computed, you get audited.