[Amezarak]

Credits are applied after you take the standard deduction. You subtract the standard deduction, figure out your taxable income, then subtract credits and taxes already paid.

> These aren’t wealthy people filing with CPAs. These are lower income folks who specifically benefited from the IRS direct file program.

Lower income people were not using IRS direct file. That’s would be the economically rational thing to do, but this is exactly the market the strip mall CPA target. They also offer advances. I have tried and tried and tried to get lower income people to use free or direct file. Virtually none are interested. They have “their guy” who is getting them a great refund.

[BrandoElFollito]

I do not even understand the terms you are using. In France (and other EU countries), "figuring out taxable income", "standard deduction", "subtracting credits", etc. are not your concerns.

The web page has all this information, you say OK and you are done. There is not a single "figuring out" you need to do.

This is, of course, the case for 95% of the population. You can be in the 5% where your tax filing becomes very complicated. In that case, though, you give this to a CPA and the cost of this service is zero compared to the amount of euros you deal with.

[Amezarak]

The IRS has no idea what deductions and credits are applicable to you and has no way of finding out. They could maybe prefill your reported gross income but then they’re at a loss.

In other countries there are such things as national citizen registries with domicile and familial information, this doesn’t exist in the US. If it did you could use that information to get much more of a start.

[dpark]

> Credits are applied after you take the standard deduction.

I did not state otherwise. The point is that you are misstating the complexity of the typical tax return. It is not in fact “enter your W-2, take the standard deduction, and done” for most people, even for those with relatively straightforward taxes.

> Lower income people were not using IRS direct file.

I don’t think the IRS has released this data. I do know that direct file was specifically limited to simple cases though.