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Comment by TheDong | Hacker News Reader

In more civilized countries, you file your current address and all change of address forms with the government, you register any separation agreements with the government, etc.

The government absolutely should know enough to apply this reasonably accurately, and things that they can't correctly derive (like 'paid more than half the costs of keeping up the home') should simply not be part of tax law, or should be a checkbox when registering your address of "I am head of household" so the government knows.

The US government can't derive all this, but they should update it so they can.

Heck, with the NSA's hooks into banks and cell phone companies, there's a non-zero chance they actually could derive this all now if they wanted.

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If I start doing odd jobs on the side for cash, there's zero papertrail of my income other than maybe text messages between me and customers. How would the government know how much money I make? Should I force my customers to file a 1099-NEC? Should I be required to get an EIN because I want to mow my neighbors lawn for cash?

If you're working a W2 job or contracting for a big company, the government is probably aware of your income and that's where we should be focused on automating tax returns but if your income comes from regular people, they likely have no idea.

Unless you turn the entire national security apparatus around to surveil citizens' income, I don't think it's ever possible for the government to know everything.

How it should work is that the government should show you everything they already know and prompt you to fill out anything they don't and then you submit it. The majority of people would immediately benefit from this. They don't do this for a few reasons: number one being the tax prep lobby that wants to make doing your taxes a burden such that even regular people feel the need to spend money or have their personal financial information gathered by private companies. The second reason is that if the government is already aware of how much you've made, chances are you've already paid your taxes and would either be looking at a refund or other tax credits, the government is effectively spending money to make it easier for you to take money away from it.

I agree with this fully, this is how a lot of civilized countries work.

For 90% of the population, taxes are automatic, and the few people who do side-jobs or have lemonade stands or deal drugs have to file their own taxes separately.

I'm not opposed to that, I just want the 90% case of "single or normal family + W2 employer(s)" to be covered automatically.

>and things that they can't correctly derive (like 'paid more than half the costs of keeping up the home')

In most situations where you paid significantly more than half deriving this information should be easy.

Obviously edge cases where someone paid 55% would not be easily derived, but probably most people wouldn't care too much about that.

“In <current year>, the Feds could derive this automatically and just send me a postcard.”

“No, they can’t.”

“But they should be able to!”

Personally, I don’t want a battered wife fleeing her husband to have to file a form with the IRS for tax purposes, but mostly I’m just tired of this kind of hn thread.

> a checkbox when registering your address of "I am head of household" so the government knows.

The American mind cannot handle such invasions of privacy.

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