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Comment by anderber | Hacker News Reader

I think the issue is that our taxes are so complex that we have to pay a 3rd-party to do it for most of us.

But for most people (although perhaps not most of the HN crowd), taxes aren't terribly complex. And in theory, the IRS already has the majority (if not all) the necessary information needed to file taxes. But Intuit and others lobby to make this more difficult.

This. Tax regulations are thousands of pages. And if you own a business, there's no way you're going to be able to run the business and become a tax filing expert.

I mean, sure, there can be complicated cases, but for the vast majority of people doing person taxes, a 1040EZ is all you need and it’s like 2 pages.

1040EZ (and 1040A) were phased out in 2018, apparently because the standard 1040 form was simplified (and, yeah, it's 2 pages). But your larger point is 100% correct.

There's no 1040EZ anymore. Just FYI.

Our taxes are not that complex and for most they have never been than complex. Reagan's tax reforms greatly decreased the complexity, and Trump's reforms made them massively easier for most people. (you can think what you want about both president's but they both made reforms that made taxes much simpler)

3rd parties convince you taxes are complex via underhanded tricks, but that doesn't mean they are. There is a reason tax software puts lots of delays in - they want to you think your computer needs time to do the complex calculations. There is a reason tax preparers interview you and then don't give you the taxes filled out instantly - they want you to think there is a lot of hard work left. Has your tax preparer ever told you that some tax deductible things are not worth deducting or did they just look at and ignore the receipt - that is a way to make taxes seem complex.

If you own a small business your taxes might be complex. However most people have been fooled into thinking their taxes are harder than they really are.

Certain aspects of the tax code for "normies" who are on the higher income side has probably gotten more complicated at various times. (Or not, see the increase in the standard deduction.) But I'm willing to bet that if you went back to the 60s or even the 70s, you'd find filling out taxes wasn't appreciably easier and a far smaller fraction of people went to accountants--and of course tax software wasn't even an option. Nor were home calculators.

I'm guessing it's far more about the rise of shopping mall tax prep than Intuit lobbying.

My taxes got much simpler after Trump's reforms - suddenly the standard deduction was large enough that I didn't have to itemize everything (to get the mortgage interest deduction) I'm not old enough to have done taxes before Reagan's reforms, but I'm told things got a lot easier then because a lot less things were deductible and so there was less lines to fill out.

It was probably pre-Reagan that if you really wanted to optimize you kept track of every sales tax receipt and piddly charitable contribution and probably other things I forget. Now there's no reason for most people to do it and most people with big enough deductions to qualify probably can't be bothered with the nickels and dimes.

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