Yes but you wouldn't benefit much by this simplified filing system anyway.

The point is there are millions of people that just have 1 or 2 W-2 incomes and don't itemize, and can file a straight up 1040 which is what H&R block is fighting.

In addition to you, people like me (S-corp owner) have complicated taxes and that's fine. We'll always pay. But doesn't mean there isn't a class of people who wouldn't benefit from this.

Yes. Taxes are complex enough in many situations that it incentivizes paying someone to take that complexity load. The simplest and most sure way to do this is to simplify taxes, but assuming the IRS will be able to to just do it all correctly for you seems naive to me. Depending on your tax situation, there's lots of information the IRS doesn't have (such as almost all deductions you might try). Having the IRS auto-fill forms for you seems like it's putting effort in the wrong place. If they can auto-fill forms for you, your taxes are probably pretty simple, but even then the forms may be complex enough that checking them may require most people use a tax preparer/checker of some sort. The real gains are from simplifying the taxes themselves, not just automating the form entry in the already simple cases. Making taxes simpler reduced the incentives for using a tax preparer, which is the right way to go about this.

> Canadian living in Canada, but with some income the IRS says is American income…

So in that case, I'm curious what the penalty is for not paying. Presumably the IRS doesn't have the power to garnish wages from Canadian banks…

But a lot of the folks who work for those big accounting firms like H&R are just seasonal data entry folks who just input all the data info their program.

I think to fight this, we need a good robust open source solution that could possibly be made automated. Only cost I assume would be for the user to e-file.

After two years at two different H&R Blocks I'm not convinced in their expertise. Got an IRS letter demanding payment for some income the first guy said I didn't have to report, I paid to make it go away and it wasn't high enough that I felt like I needed to cause a ruckus with H&R Block. (Besides they'd probably just say I was the one who forgot to include it, not their fault.) The second time the lady assigned to me tried to shoo me away for the evening (because they charge on the final amount of forms they have to file, not the time) rather than wait (I waited) for someone else at the location who wasn't confused by the concept of RSUs to become available. It'll be TurboTax for me this year though I am tempted to do it manually and use the H&R Block forms prior as a template.

Still, my taxes were complicated for 2014 so I was glad for the help. I agree that's ultimately what their value is, along with their promise of assistance should things really go wrong, it's just not usually top-expert help and if it can be replaced by cheap software it should be, even if overall simplification is still the best outcome.

Class action.

I'm as cynical as the next person, but seriously, how successful could they be approaching legislators with the idea "Make the tax code even more needlessly complicated to support our business"? Short of outright bribery I don't see any benefit to a politician for supporting something like that.

There are a lot of complications in the tax code because with 300 million people there are a lot of special cases to account for. Adding additional complexity just for the sake of complexity seems like a non-starter.

At scale a non profit could be advertising supported on the login page. Jumping from 1,000 users to 100 million does not have massive cost increases.

As soon as that non profit hit's critical mass the for profits are going to be stuck and thus stop lobbying for more complex rules. At which point the IRS can just automate the process for 95% of people.

Looks pretty neat! I contacted the person i usually file my taxes through today. Could have saved 50 bucks :(