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Comment by poink | Hacker News Reader

Because if the IRS maximized its "let's automatically do your taxes for you" ability, it would eliminate all the inadvertent violators, reducing the enforcement requirements.

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.

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> Because if the IRS maximized its "let's automatically do your taxes for you" ability

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.

“Already” feels like it’s doing a lot of the work there. The budget had been decreasing for most (the entirety?) of the last decade and only recently was increased:

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.

Seems like the argument here is whether "properly funded" for the IRS should stipulate a sane tax code. I'm fine with temporarily juicing the IRS's budget to whatever if it means we go after more tax cheats and get more revenue (I understand that the IRS is fundamentally productive re: the government's budget), but I also know that an organization never willingly gives up budget, and $13.7b isn't small potatoes, even for the US. Feels like we could do the job for that, all other problems being solved.

(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)

> Because if the IRS maximized its "let's automatically do your taxes for you" ability, it would eliminate all the inadvertent violators, reducing the enforcement requirements.

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.

Many people just have all their income come from sources that file with the IRS already (e.g. W2 filers) and they take the standard deduction.

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.

I have complicated taxes. The CPA's at the lawfirm I use request my tax data from the IRS then compare it to the tax documents from assorted firms I deal with and then just plug it all in again into a form that looks like what the IRS sent them but signed by a different party then they submit it. Even with my complicated mess it could be 100% automated, or perhaps 99.999% and I just press an "Acceptable" or "Dispute" button after they did it if such an interface existed. Every time I've had to engage lawyers with the IRS it has been a mistake of 3rd party firms neglecting to give me a missing form or page usually after mergers. Only once have I've had them accept something was incorrect after battling the IRS and to even break even on that one I would have to take a financial firm to court. The IRS should be going after the 3rd party firms that flubbed their documents, not me. It's a steamy hot mess.

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.

>> Because if the IRS maximized its "let's automatically do your taxes for you" ability, it would eliminate all the inadvertent violators, reducing the enforcement requirements.

It would also drastically reduce IRS's own costs, though.

Reductions in the size of the service? The whole idea is... It strikes at the very roots of... It's the beginning of the end! The thin end of the wedge!

like on the one hand, 13B is a lot, but on the other hand that works out to roughly $12 per person which isn't a ton if you want to actually investigate any non trivial percent of them.

Surely the IRS isn’t handling the taxes from nearly a billion people?

oops, midnight math. call it 350mil people do $50ish per?

Far too much given that the VAST majority of people turn in a 1099-EZ and have no special tax circumstances. Adding w-2s, that's a total of about 10 pages.

The 1040-EZ hasnt existed in years

> Far too much given that the VAST majority of people turn in a 1099-EZ

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.)

It's 12 per person after the taxes are taken out ;)

I most certainly do not want to investigate a "non-trivial percent" of people and there's literally no reason to do that given what the IRS already knows.

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