It drives me up the wall that we as a country have to all do this stupid homework assignment every year.
But, having to spend a day or more every March, or pay a CPA a few hundred dollars, is infuriating. My taxes aren't that complicated - two upper middle class salaries, a normal (for dense suburb) mortgage, and no kid at home any more (he flew the coop 3 years ago).
Outside of the years we were impacted by AMT (a whole other rant), the IRS knows exactly what we earn, what we've paid to date, and determining our mortgage obligation should be trivial (submission from bank to IRS or similar). They should just mail me an index card that says "your good!" or "you still owe $1200" or similar and that's that.
It's absurd.
If the US wants to improve its image abroad, joining the rest of the world (well, except Eritrea....) and doing residency-based taxation would mean that whenever a US expat is asked what they think about the US (e.g. by someone looking to go there for work opportunity, education), they wouldn't unleash a littany of dire warnings about the pesky taxation issues. My answer is always "yeah if it'll help your career I guess get in the H1B lottery, but be very careful to not pick up that green card or you'll be royally screwed for a looong time to come".
For what it's worth, I've had to fill out tax assessment forms of greater-or-lesser complexity in all of them. The US is certainly the worst, but the trope that "all other major economies just take care of the tax for you" isn't exactly right.
... is quoted literally from the original post on this thread.
https://slate.com/business/2012/04/grover-norquist-and-h-r-b...
I was hoping for at least a poll of some sort.
Bribery (lobbying) should be banned - for all political parties.
If you look directly on the Congress website, there are 20 Democratic cosponsors and 8 Republican cosponsors in the House for the Taxpayer First Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3151...