Why is “chronically underfunded” in quotes?
If the government really got on the stick and stopped trying to reduce every issue to the correct set of tax incentives/penalties, we could make the tax code something regular people (or, at least, less than a suite of specialized accountants) could understand. This would simplify both compliance _and_ enforcement.
I want the IRS to have enough resources to do its job thoroughly, but we give them $13.7b/yr already. I have a hard time believing we couldn't do the job for that if the policy were sane.
It would also drastically reduce IRS's own costs, though.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-need-to-rebuil...
But overall, I agree that way too much of federal policy is doled out as tax credits/deductions/penalties or what have you, but there are other reasons for that, which for me have little bearing on whether the IRS should be properly funded enough to after the biggest tax cheats.
(FWIW, the IRS could easily go after "the biggest tax cheats" right now. They don't need $13.7b to do that. They don't go after them because they're maximizing revenue, which I understand, but it's not like their choice of targets makes a material difference in our deficit, and I'm very worried that giving them more money will just give them more resources to "maximize revenue" and they'll simply never get to "the biggest tax cheats" because they'll never have "enough" revenue)
You are thinking of the 1040EZ which, along with the 1040A, was eliminated a while back (6 years ago, IIRC) in favor of making to the 1040 modular (but then the 1040-SR for seniors was added, which kind of reverses that policy direction.)
Unfortunately, they are legally barred from doing that. Thank Intuit and the tax-prep lobby for making people (and, most importantly, Congress) believe that doing taxes is supposed to be hard, annoying, in-your-face work.
Because apparently if it was streamlined, it would somehow make people complacent and accept (or not even notice) increased taxes. Yes, corporate propaganda can tell people they are stupid and lazy, and they not only believe it, but believe it's their patriotic duty to believe it.
What power does the IRS have to automatically do anyone's taxes? Not only would that require laws to change, which the IRS does not have the ability to change, but it would also require access to a huge amount of private info fed either by private citizens or corporations.
What amount of private information would be necessarily added?
The proposal is the IRS should propose that they tax you at X rate, and you only file if you disagree. So if you have deductions they can’t know of, then you file.
Since the discussion is about budget it is also worth noting the IRS have its own courts, lawyers, judges that operate entirely independent of the rest of the legal system. They even have summer breaks and if one has an issue it may sit in a queue for several months or years. I just closed out 2020 and that was a simple error.