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Comment by justinsb | Hacker News Reader

All the arguments against seem to stretch credulity. The IRS already computes your taxes, they are just not allowed to share that with you (thanks to Intuit's lobbying). Instead, you must repeat the computation, and hope that your computations match what the IRS has.

If you don't match, then the IRS will either audit you or send you a proposed correction (along with penalties); i.e. once you fail to match, then the IRS is allowed to show you the correct calculations.

This is an incredibly convoluted system.

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Seems to be how many Federal forms work: Fill out this form accurately, under penalty of perjury. We already know all this information, but reserve the right to prosecute you if your answers don't match ours. Don't forget to sign.

State too -- I remember when I did a defensive driving course in lieu of paying a ticket, you had to get a certified state copy of your driving record ... that the state already has.

Yes, it makes no sense at all. It's akin to a business which provides you services asking you to prepare an invoice yourself, then sending you an invoice along with a fine if you missed something. They already know everything relevant about you (except perhaps donations and such, which you can fairly easily tack on) so I don't see why anyone would prefer the current mess that we have to deal with. It doesn't help that state taxes are non-uniform and weirdness often results if you live in one state and work in another, for example.

The amount of taxes being collected throughout the year are by design higher than what you actually owe to the government. That's the same in most countries.

Of course you can get your overpaid taxes back by means of the tax return - but a lot of people don't have the money or time or knowledge to do that.

The overpaid money is to the government if requested back, an interest-free loan - if not requested back, a gift.

If the government would now tell the IRS to fill out the form for you - then there would be significantly less income - due to more accurate taxation.

> The amount of taxes being collected throughout the year are by design higher

This is not true at all. You decide how much money will be deducted from each paycheck by filling out form W-4 and similar state forms. You can make withholding adjustments after each paycheck.

IRS will penalize you if you "prepay" too little (for instance, if you owe them more than 10% of your total tax), but there nothing that prevents you from not giving them interest-free loan.

I have found that when I fill the forms out honestly and accurately, it results in too much tax being withheld. It is certainly true that I can fudge the forms to get a more accurate withholding (and I have done that at times), but it does seem to withhold too much by default.

Just that the process you described is risky ("penalize") and seemingly more complicated than filing a tax return.

This process does not replace tax return, so I am not sure why would you compare it to filing a tax return. It's a required step to establish your paycheck withholdings. You will do it anyway. There is always a risk of penalty if you make a mistake while filling out this form or have unexpected income during the year.

Since they compute your taxes for you, they should be required to share their source code. We own it.

They do, in the form of the tax code. On a more pragmatic level, IRS website is rather informative.

True, but an actual program would be a lot easier to use.

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