[AnimalMuppet]

Yeah. For example, one year I bought double-pane windows for my house, which were eligible for a tax deduction (on the grounds of promoting energy conservation). Either I have to tell the IRS that I bought those windows, or the IRS has to know that I bought windows. The second option is too close to dystopian nightmares for my taste.

[jandrese]

Nobody is calling for a completely omniscient IRS.

What should happen is you log in to irs.gov and see everything they know (number of kids, income, interest, reported charitable giving, etc...), you fill out the missing pieces (energy credits, when you bought and sold stocks, charitable giving not reported to them, etc...), and they run the calculation. It should take almost no time at all for people with simple returns and only a few minutes of inputting some basic figures for most everyone else, with of course a handful of people who have terminally complex returns and need an accountant.

Instead you have to manually enter all of the information the IRS already knows because otherwise nobody would pay for TurboTax or H&R Block. Only real accountants would be necessary for those special cases where people have complex holdings.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Precisely. For those playing along at home, that would be the Residential Energy Efficient Property Credit, Form 5695.

[Ekaros]

No system handles that kind of case. But they do handle one where person doesn't take the deductions. And is happy without them.