[xienze]

> There is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because it aligns with their narrative that taxes are bad. The more painful tax preparation is, the more sympathy they find with this narrative.

I’m guessing you’re making a thinly-veiled reference to Republicans being the ones holding this up. Congress has had Democrat control many times over the decades, they could have pushed this through any time. Perhaps both parties share blame here.

[tzs]

> Congress has had Democrat control many times over the decades, they could have pushed this through any time.

It's not that simple. A party's agenda will include several things they want to pass when they have a majority, with different priorities.

For many of the items on their agenda there will not be unanimous support within the party and there won't be unanimous opposition from the other party. The result is that for some of their agenda items they will have to get some support from the other party.

Those other party members, even if they actually like the majority party's bill, will be reluctant to go against their own party and support it because their party might retaliate, doing things like deprioritizing those members bills or giving them less important committee assignments. The majority party might have to offer those minority members some incentive to get their support, such as agreeing to support bills that those members are pushing even if those are against the majority party's agenda.

And so parties have to pick their fights. Making tax preparation easier is not something that a lot of voters care deeply about, and so doesn't become something that is worth pushing through through when you've got a small majority.

Every House seat is up for election every 2 years, and it is very common for a party that has both the presidency and majorities in both the House and the Senate to lose that House majority in the midterm election. You want to spend the time before that on your high priority items.

[ghouse]

I think the Democrats (Intuit headquarters in California) are primarily to blame here, but they find odd common ground with a portion of the Republican party who want to run up the debt by cutting revenue (while increasing spending).

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Primarily to blame? One side is in near universal opposition to the idea and the other is ineffective/uninterested at pushing it through.

[tstrimple]

You think wrong.

https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-optimistic-about-i...

> And while Porter, Beyer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and others have expressed interest in the free direct-file pilot program, congressional Republicans are speaking out against it.

> In May, the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee published a press release disapproving of the IRS' direction to move forward and create the pilot program after its chairman accused the Biden Administration of "cooking the books" in its study that ultimately recommended such a program be implemented.

> "IRS control of tax preparation is the latest step in Democrats' ongoing efforts to supercharge the agency to go after working-class families, after giving the agency $80 billion to increase audits on taxpayers making less than $75,000," said Rep. Jason Smith. "Americans will be powerless when the IRS completely controls the tax filing process from start to finish."

[xienze]

Again, at anyone point in the last several decades when Democrats had control they could have pushed it through. Your quotes don’t change that reality.

[tstrimple]

When have they “had control”? Do you understand how the US legislative process works? Only for a short time during the Obama administration did they actually “have control” and they used that time and political capital passing the ACA. Everything since basically has to be passed via reconciliation because republicans filibuster everything based on some sort of “principle”. Take a look at legislation which has been proposed, what the votes look like and what the filibuster record is. This is all very public information. There’s no need to pretend this is some fault of the Democratic Party.

[xienze]

> Do you understand how the US legislative process works?

Do you?

> Only for a short time during the Obama administration did they actually “have control” and they used that time and political capital passing the ACA.

Why are you arbitrarily limiting the time frame to recent history? A simplified tax filing method could have been introduced at any time in say, the last 50 years. During which time Democrats have had house and senate control many times [0] and the basic reality of the IRS having all your tax info ahead of time has been unchanged (read: simplified tax filing was possible). That they never seized the opportunity to do so is just evidence that they didn’t really care to, not that some shadow cabal of Republicans had held them back.

0: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jun/25/control-house-...

[boredpeter]

Odd common ground is a weird way to say that most democrats are really just conservatives. Both parties bend to the will of big business. Both parties are happy to screw over workers (just look at what Biden did to rail workers). Democrats are happy to screw over real progressives like Bernie Sanders (look at 2016) while doing nothing about the conservatives within their ranks (Joe Manchin).

Conservatives are happy to take lobbyist money and give them whatever they want. Liberal progressive want no money in politics and typically get funding from labor unions.

We need to recognize that both parties support the interests of the ultra wealthy with the exception of a handful of democrats and 3rd party candidates.