The IRS could be on the verge of changing the way Americans file their taxes | Hacker News Reader

The IRS could be on the verge of changing the way Americans file their taxes

thehill.com

24 pointsgmays17 comments

We shouldn’t have to file at all. Many European countries don’t. W-2 employees already have their taxes taken out.

The US wants you to pay taxes on your income. All of it. Not just the part that gets reported on a W-2, but also the amount you won in the March Madness office pool. They (and you) didn't get a W-2 for that.

And then there's the other end. Do you itemize? Do you deduct charitable giving? Do you want Goodwill, where you drop off your still-usable stuff, to have to know your Social Security number so that you can deduct that from your taxes?

If the government is going to do my taxes for me, they're going to have to have a much simpler tax code. I'm not necessarily against that, but it's going to be a fairly big change for a fair number of people, as quite a bit that we're used to disappears. Some of that will help us, and some will hurt.

The vast majority of filers have no additional income to report that isn't already reported with their SSN. And the current standard deduction is big enough, many people won't have additional deductions. And all of the "IRS does your taxes" plans actually have it set up so the IRS sends you/have available on their site a return populated with everything they know. So you can do nothing if it's correct or submit changes if you have additional income/deductions/credits.

I live in a developing nation in the southern hemisphere. My government sends me a pre-filled tax return that doesn't account for some deductions that I could take advantage of. If I want to, I can manually file a more detailed return. We're still working on reliable electricity tho, that's much more difficult.

I think the issue here has historically been something like... the government should not be in the business of mandating taxes, and then preparing taxes... as that could be a conflict of interests. But that seems like classic FUD to me, but it's an issue we should monitor.

Obviously it's in every US taxpayer's self interest to pay as little tax as legally possible. If a government run system can achieve that reality, then fine. If however a government run system doesn't have a fiduciary duty to optimize the return, then it's probably not great, if not unethical

It should really be this simple: Government says you owe $X based calculations that it shows. You validate, correct the mistakes (e.g. inaccurate $0 basis is a common problem for RSU reporting) and have a generous time to amend the corrections.

If you don't correct or can'd find anything to correct, then there's no work on your side (which would be the case for millions of people).

I think it's more that they think if people don't see it every April they won't appreciate or know to push back on how much money they're paying[0]. It's nonsense promulgated by folks targeting the low-information voter, of course.

0: https://slate.com/business/2012/04/grover-norquist-and-h-r-b...

To clarify, you think that the "low-information voter" would benefit from having less information?

I think they would benefit from having higher quality information than they get from seeing a number and possibly getting a refund check. I mean, just look at how many people report satisfaction in getting a large refund -- that's a silly thing to celebrate and seems to be the result of a misunderstanding about how taxes work.

I'd prefer we have automatic taxes and a short document showing taxpayers where their money is going, especially money spent in their state or county, when applicable. This should all be easy to do, just requires political will to make it happen.

In the current system the government essentially forces you to choose between overpaying, wasting a lot of time reading up on the arcane rules, wasting a lot of time and then overpaying (because the rules are never that easy), or ponying up $$$ to a private business just so that they can prepare the forms in a way the government finds acceptable.

How is this any less of a conflict of interest?

These are two different branches of government, though. Congress passes the law, and the IRS collects the taxes (the executive).

And the majority of taxpayers don't itemize so should be in pretty simple tax situations.

There used to be a meme along the lines of "Congress was too chicken to pass a law to collect taxes, yet the IRS (executive) continues to collect them. Thus you don't have to pay taxes at all, by law."

Was that nonsense? Where is the 'tax law' (not a regulation) passed by Congress?

Stay away from sovereign citizens. They play dumb word games or use magical thinking to convince themselves that they can ignore laws. Nothing they say or claim is reality, and has no value to people who intend to not break petty laws.

I don't understand your comment.

>26 U.S. Code § 6301 - Collection authority

>The Secretary shall collect the taxes imposed by the internal revenue laws.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6301

"The Secretary" is the United States Secretary of the Treasury, and the United States Department of the Treasury is the department of the Executive Branch that oversees the IRS.

This is not hidden, secret, knowledge.

Ok that's authority to collect. Where is the tax law? Fishing around I can't seem to find any specifics.

The rest of 26 U.S. Code? I mean it directly starts with "you need to pay income tax, here is a table of income brackets and percentages"...

Thanks! By digging seven layers deep in that link, I did eventually find it.

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