[rhaway84773]

What if I mess up my 1040EZ? I input something wrong and take more of a deduction than I should get?

You end up with a situation where if the IRS ignores it, then I’m getting away with paying less than my fair share. If they don’t ignore it, then it’s a lot of unavoidable hassle for me.

If the IRS gives me their calculations (which they do already!) then I know the baseline they’re using. If something looks wrong, or they don’t cover some scenarios in my life, I can simply adjust those situations from the IRS baseline.

This leads to a much more transparent, less stressful, more efficient process.

I think the less discussed part about this is the philosophical aspect of it as well. The current system frames the IRS-taxpayer relationship as adversarial. Now, this may be naturally true for 2-3% of high earners. But it’s not for 90+% of people who are basically just receiving a paycheck.

Starting with the IRS baseline allows the process for that 90+% to be more collaborative as opposed to adversarial, with either side trying to see how much they can get away with in the latter system.