[cstoner]

The vast majority of people take the standard deduction, so offering a "here's what we think you owe, but if you disagree feel free to do the full return" form would be a huge efficiency gain.

Your comment seems like a prime case of perfect being the enemy of good.

[jrochkind1]

> The vast majority of people take the standard deduction

Unless they are a homeowner, probably.

Part of the issue is that the US tax code is a lot more complex than most countries. (And the homeowner-targetted deductions are kind of insane and bad policy too).

Still, I don't disagree with the basic premise. They probably know enough to know if itemizing your homeowner-related things would be better for you, and do it that way. You can ask for adjustments, or you could always ignore what they calculate for you and do it all yourself from scratch if you wanted to, a thing I believe you _can_ do in European countries that generally calculate your income taxes for you?

Also, I wish our tax code werent' so insane.

[hibikir]

Unless you are a homeowner at an expensive metro. It used to be basically every homeowner, but the changes in 2018 led to a massive reduction of people itemizing. The standard deduction went up a whole lot, and along with it, the deduction for state and local taxes was capped to a relatively low number. So if you owe, say, $200K in your mortgage, chances are that you are going to need non-trivial bonus itemization to get to the cap, when in 2016, that was definitely enough to itemize.

In practice, about half as many people itemize today than they did back in 2016.

[tylerhou]

Also, the SALT cap is not indexed to inflation, but the standard deduction is, so as time passes it’s likely that fewer and fewer people will itemize.

[firesteelrain]

IRS can easily setup a template:

"Here is what we think you owe/don't owe. If this isn't what you expect, then click this button to add or subtract deductions. Oh and BTW, we know you owned a home last year so we included that too!" Or, "Hey we noticed you took the standard deduction last year so we assumed based on what info we have that this year might be the same so here is the standard answer!"

[lotsofpulp]

90% of federal tax filers in the US do not itemize, which includes the majority of home owners.

[tivert]

> 90% of federal tax filers in the US do not itemize, which includes the majority of home owners.

Isn't that a relatively recent thing? IIRC, the standard deduction was massively increased a few years ago.

[mikestew]

Isn't that a relatively recent thing?

Yes, it is. What difference do you think that makes in the present day?

[zaroth]

It makes a difference because policy changes don’t happen instantly.

Something we can do differently that seems obvious today could have been a disastrous policy just a few years ago.

The optics of the IRS sending out bills for thousands of dollars more than people rightfully owe are bad, to say the least.

[cpuguy83]

I owned a house from 2012-2018. Still wound up with the standard deduction every year.

[sumtechguy]

Paid mine off in 2008. I have been standard deduction ever since. My taxes take about 30 mins to do with one of the major bits of software. I could go real cheap and just copy the numbers around from year to year and do the math and mail it in. But at this point it is getting more and more silly that the IRS does not just mail us a post card with a link saying 'is this right?'. Pretty much all the ways I make money have a 10 form that they are filing with the IRS. I am fairly sure I am not alone.

[bluGill]

Since Trump's tax changes very few people itemize - it is very difficult to get about the standard deduction. The average person doesn't even have enough income (the standard deduction is about a third the average income, the odds that someone at that wage level is spending enough on deductible things is small, there are too many non-deductable things they also need to buy).

Of course it depends on where you live - in San Francisco if you can afford a house at all you have enough interest to deduct it (especially at today's rates), but other areas have more sane housing prices and lower incomes.

[jrochkind1]

I forgot the standard deduction went up a lot.

I think you can still easily reach if you, say, tithe 5 or 10% of your (post-tax even!) income (to a church or other 501-c-3) and have a mortgage and pay property taxes in a major metropolitan area. (Also if you're single the standard deduction is half married filing jointly.) (I didn't realize the personal exemption is gone now too!!)

But a quick google says... according to the IRS in 2022, 139.2 out of 154.3 million tax returns took the standard deduction, which is indeed around 90%. (Looks like up from 87% in 2020 maybe). So, true, defintiely most people, but still 10% not.

It looks like maybe pre recent Trump standard deduction changes (which were phased in), as many as 30% of filers itemized. (Still a minority to be sure).

I wonder if charities have seen a big hit in donations, if the itemized deductions people are no longer taking were an incentive.

[jdeibele]

I don't know if they have but charities (nonprofits and churches) lobbied against increasing the standard deduction or to make an exception for charities. Which didn't happen. https://www.philanthropy.com/article/nonprofits-hunt-for-a-t...

I guess there was a $300 provision for charitable deductions enacted in 2020 that they are trying to make permanent and larger. Web site wasn't working for me but Google's cache did: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WdabFa...

[frumper]

The cash donations on top of the standard deductions phased out this year. This year, as far as I could tell, only way to deduct cash donations was itemizing.\

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/tax-deductible-dona...

[akira2501]

> Your comment seems like a prime case of perfect being the enemy of good.

Which makes sense in a lot of spheres where's there's obligations on both sides. Unfortunately, if myself and the IRS come a disagreement about my filings, I can end up in jail or at the very least deal with an expensive criminal prosecution. If the IRS is wrong, then there's effectively no penalty for them.

The government wants it both ways. People understandably have some apprehension about this.

[jjnoakes]

> Unfortunately, if myself and the IRS come a disagreement about my filings, I can end up in jail or at the very least deal with an expensive criminal prosecution.

I think there's a huge gap between facing an audit in most circumstances and those two outcomes...

[RandallBrown]

I wasn't arguing for or against any system. Just wondering how it could work when the government doesn't know about a significant amount of my deductions and I ended up itemizing last year.

[tivert]

> The vast majority of people take the standard deduction, so offering a "here's what we think you owe, but if you disagree feel free to do the full return" form would be a huge efficiency gain.

> Your comment seems like a prime case of perfect being the enemy of good.

And the comments advocating for automatic tax filing seem to be ignoring Chesterton's fence. They seem to be viewing it solely through the lens of revenue collection. However, IIRC, for better or worse, one of the big levers the US government uses to influence individual behavior is incentives implemented via tax policy. It stands to reason that mechanism would stop working if individuals could avoid interacting with the tax rules.

[Taywee]

People care about what they're paying in taxes whether they're manually punching in the numbers or not. For most people, you just put the numbers in the right places when filing taxes, and don't consider the policy implications or causes at that moment, because it makes no difference at that point. You consider those effects when voting.

Removing manual filing won't stop people from voting on tax policy.

[elicash]

I know I'm likely better off with the standard deduction, but I still have to check both ways to know for sure that's the case for me. So standard deduction never actually saves me time even though post Trump tax reform I generally take it.

[alistairSH]

But surely, you're on the cusp of itemizing. Or have dramatically changing circumstances year to year. Otherwise, you're just wasting time.

FWIW, we are in the "on the cusp" boat. Another year or two and our mortgage interest vs principle equation will put us in the standard deduction range. And short of massive changes to either tax law or our income, we'll remain there.

[elicash]

Last year I had lots of investments that I hadn’t previously. This year I sold a home. Next year, I’m planning to get married. The year after that, a new home?

Maybe these are “drastic” changes but they aren’t unusual across the population. Not planning on kids, so that means I’ll have fewer changes than most. But the person I plan to marry has significant changes to income based on commission so I’ll probably be doing taxes this way for a long time!