[Twirrim]

It's more complicated than that.

There are very influential anti-tax and small government think tanks that vehemently argue against it, from the perspective that it reduces oversight.

Their position is that people just won't pay much attention to how much taxes they're paying if they don't have to fill in tax paperwork themselves each year. Their position is that if you make it invisible to end users, governments will just keep creeping up that tax percentage on end users and people will just accept it.

They're not wrong as regards to visibility, in the UK where tax is PAYE (Pay As You Earn), I don't think I ever paid more than a moments glance at the P60 (but I'd often check month to month that things were in the ballpark I'd expect. I'm a little more unusual in that regard probably). In the US I've had to pay close attention.

[kelnos]

That argument never held water with me.

Anyone who uses TurboTax etc. doesn't actually "do their taxes". They're basically just doing a data entry job, mechanically typing values into boxes from forms as TurboTax prompts them. In many cases people don't even do that, instead opting to direct TurboTax to automatically fetch their data from a payroll provider, bank, brokerage, etc. and do it for them. So for many people it's just 1) enter in financial institution usernames and passwords; 2) click "file my return".

And given that the IRS wouldn't just "send you a bill", but instead send a pre-filled return, people would have every opportunity to read through it and decide if they agree with what the IRS filled in.

There is materially nothing different. The tax prep lobby has just done a fantastic job of convincing people that it "feels better" to fill out your own taxes rather than getting a pre-filled return from the IRS. Which is bonkers, especially since that supposed "feel good" crap wastes billions of dollars every year.

(The US is also pay-as-you-earn, btw. If your employer doesn't withhold enough taxes from your paycheck and you don't make up for it by paying quarterly estimated taxes, you have to pay extra penalties come tax day.)

[Retric]

That smells like justification after the fact. We have decided to support the tax prep industry now how can we justify that stance?

[antidesitter]

This argument never made sense to me.

How is the amount on a check or bill, if made clearly visible, somehow “not visible”?

[vonmoltke]

Their actual goal is to make people resent taxes by forcing them to calculate themselves just how much money they are giving the government. It's less painful if you get something akin to a credit card statement from the IRS.

[antidesitter]

Ok, but why does making the process more painful make people lobby for lower taxes? The connection isn’t obvious to me.

To make this more explicit, presumably the chain of reasoning is as follows:

1. Make tax filing more painful.

2. As a general rule, people will set out to do that which reduces their pain.

3. Therefore, people will set out to do that which makes tax filing less painful.

4. People determine that lobbying for lower taxes will make tax filing less painful.

5. Therefore, people will set out to lobby for lower taxes.

Step 4 doesn't make sense to me because reducing total tax rate and reducing tax code complexity are orthogonal issues, and advocating for lower taxes will not in and of itself lead to a simpler tax code.

[kelnos]

I disagree with the premise, but I don't think the idea is that making the process more painful will make people want lower taxes.

It's just an in-your-face reminder of how much you're paying in taxes, supposedly sending a stronger message to you than if the IRS were to send you a pre-filled return.

So the idea is, if you're more obviously reminded of how/why your tax money is leaving your wallet, you'll hate taxes more and lobby for lower taxes. You understand that doing so won't make filing taxes any less complicated (and in fact it might be more complicated if taxes are lowered through new deductions and credits that you need to prove eligibility for), but you'll expect to be paying less.

It's still stupid, but at least the chain of logic could potentially hold if you squint close enough and agree with the premises.

[antidesitter]

> It's just an in-your-face reminder of how much you're paying in taxes

But that’s just going back to my comment 4 levels up this thread. If it’s an issue of tax amount visibility and not tax filing pain, the latter is not needed for the former.