I've had someone on this site say to me that it's because America embraces the free market, as well as it being the only country to have granular enough taxes to require a third party to handle it. It's incredibly hard because you can point to any other country to show examples of good (not perfect) implementations but then American exceptionalism takes over and they simply dismiss any advice.

It sounds like that particular someone might have had a vested interest in maintaining the current (terrible) status quo around filing taxes in America.

The rest of us hate it.

The one thing I've discovered as I’ve got older is that most people don’t have some insidious vested interest.

Complex political issues sometimes just come down to "I want my side to look good and I want the other side to look bad". In a system that treats Silicon Valley billionaires very differently to someone selling lumber in rural Ohio, sometimes that naked tribalism is the only thing that truly unites people in political parties.

Some people hate the IRS self-filing system because it works, and because the "other side" is taking credit for it.

The other thing I dicovered as I‘ve gotten even older than you is that some people absolutely do have insidious vested interests.

It’s just a demonstration that people are capable firmly believing any type of nonsense. Nobody who isn’t being fed a bunch of propaganda is concerned about the freedom to fill out forms.