[Moto7451]

Also factor in the removal of the State and Local Tax deduction. Prior to that I ended up writing off my CA taxes instead of taking the standard deduction.

I’ll save my personal political ranting for a different space.

Addressing the GP, yeah our system has been messed with by the tax prep companies. One year I had a complicated (for me) tax situation and I hired a CPA. They managed to make a mistake that lead me to overpaying by thousands. The IRS was nice enough to mail me a check.

The IRS clearly has enough info to run a European style system. We (as a country) just underfund the IRS and have special interest vested in maintaining the status quo. Clearly those special interests are doing a great job if someone with a state certification and professional tax software can mess up the math. A friend had the same issue with this past tax year and owes a balance plus penalties. She has every intention of paying her taxes. Why does our system make it hard for her to do so?

There’s no good reason why we should have to chance these situations. We should just be able to pay our taxes correctly at time we are paid and move on.

[GFischer]

It's not only Europe. I live in Uruguay and I got an SMS to check if my auto-filed taxes were correct, if I do I have the option to make changes right in the government website.

And the local IRS has the best paying software development jobs in the government, so they actually have decent software (although they could do with some more UX people).