[eh78ssxv2f]

> If you're an employee and/or a student then everything you do should be reported to the government, taxes should have automatically been withheld, and the government should be able to figure out everything on their own.

In such cases, isn't it already super straightforward to file taxes? Just copy-paste information from W2 to 1040ez, and you are done?

[PeterisP]

The point is that a hundred million people could well do with not spending the time and effort to copy-paste that information and figure out if they're doing that correctly, and there also would be a hundred million less declarations for IRS to review.

That's how it works in quite many other countries; if you don't have anything peculiar, then you simply don't do anything at all, the appropriate taxes were already withheld by the employer and that's it. You file a declaration if you're running a business, are renting property as a landlord, or something like that, but the vast majority of "normal people" do not need to care how the tax declaration process works.