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by dghlsakjg 869 days ago
1. Politics. Funding the IRS sufficiently is, sadly, controversial. Additionally, tax filing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and they lobby politicians very heavily to make it hard to file taxes.

2. The IRS doesn't have everything, it has about 90% of what the average person needs to file taxes. Most people could answer about 5-10 simple questions and the IRS would have everything they need (this is basically how tax filing firms/software get it done after you give them all of the information that the IRS already has). A minority have more complex tax situations, but these people likely already have a personal accountant, or are running a business.

1 comments

> The IRS doesn't have everything, it has about 90% of what the average person needs to file taxes.

Well, not quite. The IRS knows 100% of what the average person is going to put in their tax return. So just automate that.

There is a small percentage of people with more complex tax situations. Yes, they will need to file a tax return. Percentage-wise, it is very few people.