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The idea is to make it easier for the average person. Those involved with subchapter S corporations are probably not amateurs and are not the target audience.

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Taxes are easy for the average person. A basic 1040-A, and certainly 1040-EZ (these two cover most taxpayers), are not difficult to do on paper if you can read and have a little patience.

I'm not defending Intuit here, by the way. But most people don't need what they are selling.

You cannot itemize a 1040.

True, you need the full 1040 return for that, but most people don't have enough deductions to itemize -- that was my point. The average tax return is a 1040A or 1040EZ with the standard deduction. Those are easy.

> but most people don't have enough deductions to itemize

FWIW, $100k in NYC puts your state + city taxes well over the standard deduction.

I wasn't arguing against that. Rather against the conceit that my tax situation must be the result of people conspiring to keep things complicated, when the big thing (that got me thousands of dollars) was probably something that cannot really be simplified much further. Yet TT found it for me when lots of CPAs just didn't understand it.

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