re: #393 Man, DangerMan

Take it a step further.

The GOP and Trump claimed you could file a tax return on a postcard.

How’d that work out this year? It didn’t. The return was the same length and size. Why?

For one thing, tax prep companies lobby to prevent a simplified return where the IRS already fills in all the information that already feeds into the IRS via W2, 1099, and other corporate filings from brokerages and financial companies and employers.

They could feed all that in to the IRS and the taxpayer can call up their return that is prefilled, and all the taxpayer has to do is indicate that the return is complete, or that they want to identify additional credits, deductions, etc., above the standard deduction.

It still wouldn’t be a postcard, but that would speed the tax prep process, since the IRS already has the data needed to compute the tax due unless you are going to take one of the handful of remaining deductions or credits, or seek to itemize.

Most Americans would benefit from that system. Tax prep companies wouldn’t.