Slashdot Mirror
Why the IRS Should Automatically Fill In Returns With What It Knows
theodp writes "An article in the NY Times begins, 'In the digital age, filing income tax returns should be a snap. Important data from employers and financial institutions has already been sent to government computers. Yet taxpayers are still required to perform the chore of preparing a return from scratch, in many cases paying a software company for the privilege.' Why, if your needs are simple, can't you just download forms pre-filled with whatever data the IRS has received about you, make any necessary adjustments, and automatically get the IRS calculation of your taxes? Sounds reasonable, but the IRS rejected the President's proposal to give taxpayers the option to do so as 'not feasible at this time' due to delays in the receipt of W-2 and 1099 data. However, California managed to offer a pre-filled state tax return, which cost only 34 cents to process compared to $2.59 to process a traditional paper return. Despite the success of the pilot, meager funds have been allotted for the program due to the strength of its political opponents — 'principally, Intuit' — according to the state controller. Intuit argues it would be a 'conflict of interest for government to be both tax collector and tax preparer.'"
Because we would find out how poor the government is about actually keeping track of data..
Seriously.. you'd probably log in to find that you have 27 kids and are 3 years of age.. and your income is the same as your zip code..
In Finland you get a pre-filled tax sheet in the mail, you only have to return it if there are any changes you need to make. I'm currently living in the US, I find the amount of crap you need to go through to get your affairs in order absolutely stunning.
Intuit would probably argue that it's a conflict of interest to be both a tax payer and tax preparer.
In Holland they already do that. You only have to change everything that you think is incorrect.
They still think I owe them over $5,000 for back taxes, even though all the documents were sent directly to them and they know precisely how much I made and/or didn't make, and only ever owed them about a hundred and fifty bucks (which has long since been paid off.) they stole a bunch of my money through withholding to which they were not entitled, and since I passed some arbitrary deadline without getting it all resolved, they intend to keep it. Fuck California and the California Franchise Tax Board in the neck.
With that said, if you don't have to file if you make less than the exemption amount, why should you have to file if you don't have any unusual economic activity to account for? That's ridiculous.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
pre-filled tax forms that you only have to sign and return have worked well here in Sweden for years, no conflict of interest at all. A couple of years ago, they even started with an SMS option, where you just can "ok" your pre filled tax form with an SMS code.
If you want to add information, you can just fill in your own form and send it in, but I think its pretty common to just use the pre-filled tax form.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
intuit is right: the government will claim this or that, and people will just accept it. when an honest mistake by the government, nevermind malicious intent, might wind up overtaxing someone. most people will wind up spending say $2,000 more on their taxes, accepting the government's proposal unseen, rather than reviewing it for mistakes
i don't know about other people, but for me, i'd rather pull my own fingernails out with a wrench than do my taxes. however, the current status quo means that if there is an error, whether honest mistake or malicious, it is usually in favor of the individual, not the government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here in Norway, if you feel you have nothing to add, you don't even have to return the papers. Just sit back and relax. I've never had to fill out anything.
I'm gonna be famous, tell everyone!
In Norway we have had pre-filled tax sheets for several years. Now we don't even have to send it in if its already correct.
If the IRS were to list everything it knows, wouldn't that be an invitation to cheat on your taxes? As it stands, we have an incentive to report everything, because if the IRS knows about income and we don't include it on our 1040, we get busted. But if the IRS tells us what it knows, many (if not most) people would simply pay the tax on that, and neglect to report the rest.
Our current system relies on the taxpayer to disclose income and deductions. Isn't it a conflict of interest to have the person paying the taxes decide what to tell the government? In the current case, only the people who know what information the government collects (W-2, 1099 i.e. people who don't get paid in cash) disclose everything.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I wonder how much the IRS figures into its revenue stream the profit obtained via people filing taxes and not knowing what they're doing. Folks who use professional preparation services no doubt get them correct most of the time and owe the correct amount (or get the right refund), but how many people are just doing it via paper and submitting, and, due to the arcane, maze of rules and regulations, overpay and don't claim the exemptions they should?
Leave it up to the IRS -- they probably have it figured out that if they pre-fill items on forms, that means less error and less money. Plus, this gives them more opportunity to audit and assess fees. Whee!
Blog,Twitter
Either you get it right, in which case same result to them.
Or you pay to much, in which case they win.
Or you pay too little, in which case they hit you with interest and penalties and win again.
I don't know how they can possibly defend that position. The very necessity of a tax-preparation industry is insane, and the only way they get away with it ethically is by blaming the government for having such complicated tax laws. But there's no way for them to reasonably object when the government makes things simpler and more efficient.
Intuit is evil anyway. Charging $50 for the same software every year.. Not to mention SafeDisc..
I must say, shut up! I like my easy money, damn!
~The roAm
And, um, PS: before you go dissing fairtax.org, *actually read their site*; there are several flat-federal-tax proposals out there, some of which *are* snake oil. Theirs does not appear to be, to me.
It's Schernau's Razor - "if you do the work, then I don't have to". The IRS is in BUSINESS to collect, process, and audit (the incorrect) returns. They are not required to show any efficiencies, why would they? Every little Napoleon in the org chart beefs up his staff as much as he can.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
At least in the Netherlands. We have digital form, that downloads the data the goverment posseses when you start it up with your social security number. The conflict of interest line is bullshit to me: You only get the figures the goverment got from banks and employers, nothing more (or less). Works like a charm, I get my taxes done (and those of my wife) in about an hour. (And businesses are required to use a digital tax return and all vendors of accounting software can file a tax return from within the accounting software, this is not exactly rocketscience. Intuit should be the one asking for a facillity to make this possible in their program)
Joost
Why, if your needs are simple, can't you just download forms pre-filled with whatever data the IRS has received about you, make any necessary adjustments, and automatically get the IRS calculation of your taxes
But IRS does more than this - if your employment is simple, you don't have to fill in any forms at all.
oh, wrong country.
Well, it's a good question - why can't your IRS also do this?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
* Pre-filled tax returns - Check
* All banks require login and signing via OTP pads - Check
* Bank-ID provides electronic signatures - Check
* The SSID-equivalent "personnummer"/birthdate is publically available without posing risks since its not used for authentication - Check
After all, if the Government makes all the claims about you, and fills out your form, how can they hold you liable for their mistakes? Makes getting people charged with tax fraud and perjury and threatening them with jail time if they do not pay up the dollars demanded pretty hard...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In Estonia you log into e-tax dept webpage via bank or ID-card and click OK couple of times on prefilled form and that's it. If surplus, they transfer it to your bank account.
If the IRS pre-fills what the government knows about on the form, then that tells you what the government doesn't know about, and thus can safely be omitted. If you get a blank form, there's always the risk that the government knows about your offshore account and will prosecute you for omitting it.
Hey; there's an echo in here. ;-)
Here in the UK, most people pay tax through the PAYE (Pay-As-You-Earn) scheme. The only people who regularly don't are the self-employed.
This means that the majority of the working population NEVER need to file tax returns.
However, some people do regularly file tax returns -
1. People asked to do so through random audit
2. If you are considered a 'high-rate' taxpayer (meaning you earn more than about £36,000pa).
But, you can elect to file a tax return even if you earn less than the 'high-rate', and you can often get some money back for overpayments.
I still can't believe the amount of hassle you have to go through in the US each year when it comes to tax-time.
-Nano.
The IRS shouldn't even exist. Why tax productive work? Why not tax consumption? The more you buy, the more tax you pay. If you save and are thrifty, the less tax you pay.
http://www.fairtax.org/
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
The real issue here isn't companies, but the IRS itself. If it could computerize and provide pre-filled tax forms then the agency would need far fewer auditors, lawyers, data entry folks, and so on. No group, be it inside a company or in government likes to take actions that reduce their size and perceived importance even if it is the best thing to do.
The US greatly needs to simply its tax code, allowing things like pre-generated forms to be accurate for a much larger group of Americans. While this will save billions in costs at the IRS and in money spent preparing taxes, and thus is a net win for the economy in the long term it will have the effect to putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work in the short term. All our elected officials think about is the short term, so that trumps.
If you want to fix the root of the problem, then implement term limits. If our elected officials could only serve one or two terms then they would be much less incentivized to figure out how to make a career out of corporate contributions, and much more likely to do what is right for the future.
In 2006 I dissolved to company got everything in order forgot about it. Then a couple years later Revenue Canada contacted me about a T-5 slip that hadn't been properly filed, turns out the accountant goofed. Well I got everything in order and it was determined that the gov actually owed me money. Well they went and instead of paying me levied a penalty for late filing, which I paid. Well when it was their turn to pay they said your company doesn't exist any more we can't pay you. Funny how I had to pay them from my own pocket for a company that didn't exist but then they don't pay me what they owe me.
This is a grand idea that I am mostly in favor of, but before we proceed to that there is something I would like to see first...
Namely, do away with the retarded fee to file my state taxes online. I purchased TurboTax and it lets me file my federal for free, but there is a fee ($20 or something, I'm not sitting at that machine at the moment so I can't verify it) to file! And if I want to use part of my return to pay that fee, it costs me an extra $30. How retarded is that.
If you were offended by anything I said... No, I'm not sorry. Please lighten up.
But who cares about that? When the Federal Government first started offering 'free' electronic filing for 1040EZ, I took advantage of it, only to discover that I was forced to use 3rd-party software, all of it online. I tried two different vendors; one was Intuit and the other I forget. I could not do anything close to just quickly filling in the information because they wanted to treat me as a 1040A filer or something and force me to answer a million questions about everything. Then, after answering all the questions, they claimed I was not an EZ filer and thus had to pay money. This was false because there was no way I had enough deductions to waive the standard deduction, especially based on the information they asked for. I tried for 4 hours to navigate their byzantine system and was never able to get my 'free' return.
I ended up going to the IRS website and in less than 5 minutes I found, downloaded, filled out, printed, signed and had the sealed envelope in the mailbox. I've been paper filing ever since and I won't change until I have to fill out something besides an EZ.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I have since gotten out of this business, but I used to prepare tax returns in a small town. People would come to us with 1 W-2, and a few dependents to claim. Take me all of 5 minutes to do the return, especially if they were a previous client as it would pre-fill prior information. We would collect anywhere from $150 to $200 for a return like this, because we would file it rapid refund so they could get a check back from the bank the next day. I told people they could E-file the whole thing for $75 and get the money in a couple weeks, sometimes less than that if you timed it right, but they wanted the money the next day. Sometimes people would even pay more and get $1000 instantly, and the rest the next day. These same people wouldn't drive 2 blocks down the road to the public library and file for free and wait for their refund, so what makes you think they would file it for free with the IRS? Also a lot of these people were lower income people who didn't even have a bank account because they don't trust banks, what makes you think they are going to trust that the government is not screwing them on their tax return? I wouldn't trust the IRS. I personally saw many mistakes the IRS would make processing people's returns, which would cause them lots of time and money to get straightened out. For the above reasons, this will never happen.
This should be blatantly obvious. Of course they already know most of the answers. But they're using this as a test of your honesty. Why should the IRS go through a lot of work to make your return slightly easier, when they're benefiting from having you self-report?
If your answers don't match what they already know, they can fine you up the wazoo, charge back interest, etc. Much more profitable and less work.
Too late to be known as Bush the First, he's sure to be known as Bush the Worst.
In the US private companies are able to fill in your data electronically. Your employer, banks, etc can download their data (essentially the forms the IRS has them mail to you) directly into your tax preparation software. It is only the gov't that finds such things infeasible.
--
Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
And no, I'm not trolling, nor am I paid by fairtax.org.
Back years ago there was a push to have simplified tax filing. It lasted for only a short time for reasons that never were explained. I used HRB filing software and instead of printing out all the form data you could chose to print out only the amounts on a one page return, sign and mail. It was much easier than what was to come of printing out reams worth of paper ( I had a small business then). Initially the 1040EZ back then was in truth "Easy" and the 1040A was fairly straight forward. Not anymore.
Every year there is talk about making filing better and every year it gets more complicated. It should be able to simply be done without having to pay a preparer for the majority of people.
Matt's addition to Occam's Razor:"The most simple answer is preferred by those that are simple."
In Switzerland, authorities don't get information from employers or banks, so they cannot pre-fill the forms.
However, they do offer a free tax program for download, which makes things much easier. It takes care itself of the very complex rules for various deductions, so it makes the forms quite easy to fill. It also shows directly how much you will have to pay, and prints the forms out for sending.
(and it's a Java program with Windows, Mac and Linux installers; only Amiga users have been left behind...).
has, is -- and will be in the foreseeable future -- not to provide services for free which are already provided by commercial ventures unless the citizen can prove very low income and inability to pay.
Some cynics may even say the entire tax code is a guarantee of lifetime employment for accountants, but that may be far-fetched.
Or not.
1) It's common sense, and everyone knows how careful the government is to distance itself from that.
2) It's what the American public wants (except the people who make money of the existing confusion).
For those 2 reasons, we can be sure that neither party will ever accept this. Except perhaps as a diversion to rally their voters, but then only if they know if has no real chance of getting through.
e.g.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070220/debtext/70220-0013.htm
All laws, including tax law, should have a mandatory maximum validity period.
Deleted
I think we should get rid of the income and sales taxes altogether and just have a flat energy tax. A flat energy tax would attract conservatives because it is a tax on consumption, rather than investment, and liberals because it is both environmentally friendly and progressive, to policy planners because it would smooth out the bust and boom revenue cycle that comes from our top heavy tax code today, and everyone because it would actually be a lot easier to administrate.
This is my sig.
Look, it's not like the government takes my word for it on most of the numbers I submit, anyway. If I put in the wrong number from my W-2 or W-9, they replace it with the right number, and either send me the bill or deduct from my account if I underpaid. So if they were consistently lousy with their records, this would be happening all the time.
I once got a letter from the IRS informing me that I didn't report interest income from a bank account I forgot about because it had so little money in it, so since I'd payed by direct deposit they just deducted the $0.15 from my account.
Another time I got a digit wrong on my W-2 amount, and the IRS informed me that they'd corrected the amount and credited me with the $400 I didn't need to pay, and if I thought this was an error to please call them (even if I thought it was, would I?) They do the same thing for math errors you make.
Anyway, my point is, for most of the basic things that you put on a 1040 in a boring year, the government already knows and more to the point already considers the numbers they have to be authoritative unless disputed.
So... My employer and banks still send me the tax info they usually do, the gov sends me their numbers and calculated tax liability, and if it's all right -- which it probably will be, the gov gets their numbers from the same banks and employers I do after all -- then I just pay it and am done with it. If it's not you do the 1040-Difficult like normal. I'm not seeing the huge problem here.
The enemies of Democracy are
Now I'll know how well I've hidden my income.
Have gnu, will travel.
The tax filing and preparation industry, of which Intuit is a part, has long been an obstacle to any change in the tax code that would serve to simplify and reduce the need for their services. However, they are far from the only special interest group with an incentive to keep the US Tax code as complex, opaque, and unintuitive as possible. The tax attorneys who help the wealthy arrange their affairs to minimize taxes under the complex rules, the Federal Law Enforcement agencies who periodically use the tax code as a tool to prosecute those who they cannot otherwise charge (i.e. organized crime, income from illegal activities, etc) and of course the tax accountants who work at all levels as guides through the byzantine labyrinth of the US tax codes. Each of these groups, and especially the attorneys (who are the number 1 contributors to the Democratic Party btw), lobbies vigorously against any change in the law which they perceive to be a threat to their ongoing and profitable stream of revenue. Few things in life are as certain as death and taxes after all and one would be hard pressed to think of a more stable source of revenue, as an attorney or tax industry insider, than a system mandated by the Federal Government that every American must use at least once per year.
Here in France, I just have to return signed papers with my modifications, if any. Also, I can just sign it online, and if I decide to do it that way I get a 20 euros tax rebate the first time I use the service. And the governement website was made accessible to free browsers a few years ago, and if the governement asked me too much, I get that money back.
They won't do it because then the tax payer knows what sources of income the government doesn't know about. The uncertainty now is enough to scare some people into declaring their tips, gifts, or private sales. Full disclosure from the government makes it easierto dodge taxes. The correlary is that more people might pay if the simply get a bill in the mail. Of course, that just "puts the burden" on "poor people", because the educated would be smart enough to get away with not declaring an overseas investment, and the poor would be too afraid not to send money they know the government wants.
In Soviet Russia taxes prepare you!
if you use Intuit/Turbotax/quicken/whatever, once you start filling in your information they can connect to your financial institution and download 1099, capital gains information W-2s etc..
Talk to your local CPA, and they want you to fill in a electronic version of a excel spreadsheet. When I ask the CPAs why they don't use a solution whereby I don't have to worry as much about typos, and I don't have to pay a junior accountant to verify that I entered in my capital gains correctly in some excel spreadsheet type online form, they always tell me, "Accountants don't like change."
This isn't just Intuit, it's all the accounting firms out there that want the system to be complex.
You forget that you take responsibility for what is on the form, even if it is pre-filled the moment you sign it. There's nothing stopping the government from sending you a blank or zero form and you'll just sign it and send it in thinking that you won't get prosecuted for the offshore tax haven account that you have. They'll still go after you no matter what.
Less Fraud, More Correct Taxes
There will be no increase of fraud due to this but I predict that most people will actually send their taxes in quicker and more of them will be more correct than the current numbers. We already have the IRS eFile system to let you do the web form part but they are all blank. It would be nice if they were pre-filled in with your information already. You'll just glance at it, take your Standard Deduction instead of Itemized Deduction for most people, type in your bank account or credit card number to pay or receive payment. You wouldn't have to look for or dig out those W2 or 1099 forms trying to figure out all the income.
Special Interests At Work
The simple point is that in the United States the government is run by "special interest" groups. The founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson and James Madison warned us about the dire effects that special interest groups will have on the government if they are allowed to mass their money and influence the rule of the country. It's all in their speeches that we all should have been forced to read in elementary and high school history and civics courses. America's educational failure.
Now what do we have, a special interest part such as Intuit who is responsible for the Turbo Tax software and their electronic filing service trying to prevent the government from offering a pre-filled tax form service to the people. Just imagine how quickly Intuit would change its mind if the government approached them and told them that they would be the sole company responsible for getting people's taxes filed and I can guarantee that the first year you'll be presented with almost completed and pre-filled forms once your type in your Tax ID number.
Educational Gaming
We need a multi-genra massively multi-player video game where at first you play a First Person Shooter with friends as a team of The Founding Fathers and you first kick the British out of the colonies, then it switches to Real Time Strategy game where you maneuver the troops during the colonial war, and later it switches to a Civilization type diplomatic game where you negotiate terms of the new constitution and treaties with European countries. It'd be a nice way to have kids experience a modern way of what the history taught us. Sprinkle in a good load of historic facts in the game and you'll have kids arguing their view points because of the game.
It is a software money exchange system which treats financial transactions as if they were like particle collisions in a particle accelerator.
The tokens or particles mentioned below are encrypted web-service requests, except for "receiving particles" which are web service destinations for requests.
When someone wants to purchase something, a token representing a sum of money hits the vendor's receiving particle, which sends a confirmation of the payment to the payer's online identity. The vendor's particle has been pre-configured to split the payment particle into smaller particles (that add up to the payment total). One sub-particle goes to each royalty participant or supplier/distributor etc., with amount a proportion agreed on in advance.
Another sub-particle goes immediately to the relevant Federal government(s) as prescribed VAT/sales tax payment. Another sub-particle goes to another government (say state government) as its tax payment,
and the remaining sub-particle goes as a deposit request to the vendor's bank account.
The same thing could apply for taxable salary payments etc.
General point is that all due tax payments, and all supplier/royalty sharing, is handled automatically and instantly at the moment of the original payment.
Therefore, assuming that each stakeholder has the right and technical means (identity key and web-service queries) to query the history and semantics of each and only the transactions they are party to, there is no non-automated accounting to do after the fact.
Standard accounting reports (from the POV of any stakeholder) can be produced automatically by the system on demand, for purposes such as tax returns (which are then just a summary for information purposes, there is no tax to ay or return after the fact generally, because the overall state is maintained in its proper legal balance at all times.
A complicated addition could somehow adjust balances when tax credits are applied for and approved. Most of these credits would be automatically calculable by the government tax
departments because they would have had real-time
access to the relevant parts of the financial situation of the parties.
Parties (payers and vendors, employers and employees) could perhaps opt into this system
(and its inherent privacy losses) for the benefit
of not having to do any after-the-fact accounting
or payments/receiving.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
We get a pre-filled tax sheet, you confirm that it is correct by either sending in an SMS with a one-time code, logging into a secure web site or returning it in the included (postage pre-paid) envelope.
You can also make any needed changes either electronically or on the paper form.
The online form will also automatically calculate how much you owe or will get back.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Think about it. You pay $50 a year for some tax software - you are also going to pay 10% of that as taxes. If you go to a tax preparer, they are going to pay taxes on an even greater amount. The result is that the IRS gets more money, period. The states get their cut of this as well, and they are massively overspending now, so they desperately need it.
Do you really believe the IRS is going to (a) reduce the amount of money they get and (b) cut off a source of revenue to the states? No way.
Most other countries do not have any sort of problem taxing the heck out of citizens, so they are already paying 60-70% to the government. I'd say those governments do not need the extra hit, but in the US it is certainly welcome.
Would the IRS do a better job if they told people what they owed? Maybe. The problem is the IRS doesn't trust their sources any more than they trust the average taxpayer. Today, it is a secret battle between people reporting what other people should be reporting and paying on. Anyone that comes out on the short end gets audited if they are blatent enough. If the IRS told people what they owed, they would be removing this check.
I completely forgot about this. Last year Turbo Tax let me fill out my taxes based on my company. All I did is select my company from a list and it auto-filled all of my data and I checked it over.
Everybody's hot and bothered about the HOW, begging the question of the LEGITIMACY of taxes in the first place.
So how's anarchy working out for you?
If the geiger counter does not click, the coffee, she is not thick.
Or the act of in plain consciousness allowing yourself to be part of this big scam.
I try that every year and it hasn't worked yet. I assume it is my company that doesn't publish the info (perhaps they have to pay for the privilege or perhaps they see a privacy issue). Anyway, a company with 60,000 employees globally and about 25,000 in the US and they don't publish the data so Turbo Tax can import it. I wish they did!
If the IRS fills out what it knows, I have a better idea of whether I'm going to be audited. Downloading IRS info, and checking it to make sure it's correct, and clicking OK means the IRS already has everything it needs, and no audit needs performed under most circumstances. At the same time, Intuit is not the preparer - I download and check it, meaning I an the preparer.
Which brings me to my problem - you shouldn't require software or assistance to ensure your taxes are paid. There shouldn't be any sort of tax preparer, unless you are doing something complicated. However, I have found a number of times where H & R Block found small refunds I can take advantage of that I would not have known about myself. That shows it is too onerous for a person to get back what they deserve. If I do not get every cent entitled to me by law, the government has stolen money from me by obfuscating my entitlements in an unreadable legal quagmire.
Also, when Intuit does your return, it doesn't guarantee to take the fall for anything claimed in error - it asks you to review, and sign it yourself. Intuit's software does not qualify as a "tax preparer" for legal reasons, as far as I know. The taxpayer is on the hook for any errors in the software, although you might be able to convince an auditor that you didn't make that mistake intentionally, and they might go easy on you just like they went easy on presidential nominees for the same thing. Right?
By my own observations in a state with term limits, what actually happens at the state senate and house is that they just try to steal as much as they can in their short time allowed and get just as little done as before.
Legitimacy is not a terribly useful or operational concept, being so subjective.
Tax is a compelled flow of work or work product from a semi-autonomous part (person/corporation) to a whole (government organization). It says to the part "You will direct to me in a usable form a fractional part of the result of your use of energy." The social contract trades this energy tribute for security and norms-enforcement services, and other globally organized services provided back to parts to tame their environment and lower their energy requirements for surviving in it.
The social contract is enforced with the grudging assent of the majority of the parts, because it enables prevention of energy-wasting social friction, and assists in the regulation of trust-and-convention-based economic co-operation among the parts. That regulated economic cooperation generates more wealth, which, through the tax portion, empowers the whole in a (virtuous) circle. The state is an organism, and you are a cell in it. You have some freedom to move in it, but it constrains you somewhat and demands that some of your work work for its purposes too. It is all for your own good (on average, measured as energy requirements per unit of survival/reproduction probability for the parts.)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You don't even know who lives in the country (hence your census), if you don't have such basic info in place, isn't this scheme a bit ambitious?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Just got a pop-up from Quicken 2007 telling me that it will cease down-loading data from my bank at the end of April. If I want to keep being able to do this, then I'll have to upgrade to Quicken 2010.
This is the second time that Intuit have made an incompatible change to the download data format (at least while I've been using it). So I'm going to assume that their business plan now includes a forced upgrade every three or so years. Time to start researching non-evil alternatives.
Most of us who've bothered to think about it much aren't begging the question; we've considered it, answered it, moved on, and see no need to keep bringing it up.
It really shouldn't surprise you that you're in the minority on that view, even among people who've stopped to think about it.
I like having roads and police officers and fire departments and ambulances and education being provided for everyone. That money's gotta come from somewhere, and no matter when it comes from, it's going to be called "tax".
Most of us who've bothered to think about it much aren't begging the question; we've considered it, answered it, moved on, and see no need to keep bringing it up.
It really shouldn't surprise you that you're in the minority on that view, even among people who've stopped to think about it.
Not really surprised, but the image that forms in my mind watching this discussion is a flock of sheep debating whether it's better to get sheared with blades or with electric clippers.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
That's a bit scary. Did you try telling Turbo Tax that you were William Gates and that you worked for Microsoft, just to see what he would have to pay? Hopefully that would require you to put in his SSN, but it would be REALLY bad if it didn't.
It only takes about a generation and people begin to forget or even lose the imagination of the things the way they used to be.
Government workers used to get paid reasonably close to the private counter parts. FACT. Public service was an honorable profession and for many it was worth the slightly lower wages (but increased stability.) Government workers were not thought of as incompetent crooks; well not all of them were - plus the bad ones tended to stick out MORE because there was more of a contrast and other well intentioned workers less tolerant of them. This was the general case long ago; now people can't even imagine the possibility of what was and did actually exist. Its so bad some people can't believe it ever was any better than it is today.
On a local level, I've SEEN politicians sucker people into undermining and wrecking public services with the INTENT of replacing them with his friend's private business. I've seen this done and sadly; even when its so fast people can remember how much better it was before "reform" and expensive privatization with no real benefits -- not enough people get upset or notice to change the result. It actually takes something really really bad before it can be reversed. Its the fault of the citizens ultimately that this stuff happens. We've had a long term large scale more organized version of this going on in the whole country.
I've seen money wasted on things that could have been done in-house simply because they don't want to compete with the contractors. Its crazy non-thinking behavior. I don't hire someone to cut my grass because I'm afraid I'm unfairly competing with them.
The public and the officials set low expectations-- so we allow bad results because that is what we EXPECT to get. Any manager expecting little will eventually have their expectations met.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
And when I say "paperwork", it's not just an inconvenience -- there is a number attached to it. In the wake of the 1993 Nannygate, a handful of nanny payroll services popped up. They charge $50/month, or $600/year. That's a significant percentage -- and waste of the U.S. economy -- for those who need only, say, $2,000 or $3,000 per year of babysitting.
Now, I personally usually get around that limit by alternating between two babysitters, but the first year I moved to Denver I didn't know that many and had just one, and forked out the $600 for the payroll service.
So with universal mandatory reporting with no or drastically reduced reporting thresholds, is everyone going to rush out and pay $600/year for a payroll service just to hire a babysitter a few evenings a year? No, it'll just be under the table, thereby making everyone a criminal, with selective enforcement, or political blackmail, as with Zoe Baird.
In the case of small businesses, all this mandatory reporting just raises the barrier to entry of new small businesses, limiting social mobility, increasing the class divide, and since most new jobs come from small businesses, limiting job creation.
If the goal is tax filing simplification, then just eliminate the income tax, or raise the thresholds significantly. The federal income tax is a charade anyway, given the federal government's ability to print money. The federal government existed for over a century without an income tax. E.g., the Civil War was funded by Lincoln printing "greenbacks".
That "social contract" sounds very much like a Microsoft EULA. I just ignore it.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
When Ed Foster was still alive, each year his GripeLog would rate the most abusive software companies in the United States. Microsoft was usually first, of course, but once Intuit was rated the most abusive.
The U.S. government is so corrupt that it amazes and scares me. Anything for those who want to make money using the power of government. When Saudis attack, invade Iraq? When Intuit wants something, use any foolish excuse to give it? Put a 6 times higher percentage of the population in prison as any European country? All part of U.S. government corruption.
The state is an organism, and you are a cell in it.
That attitude is a relic of communism and fascism and has no place in a free society.
You have some freedom to move in it, but it constrains you somewhat and demands that some of your work work for its purposes too.
You don't understand. You are not a cog in a machine, you are an individual. The government works for YOU. You pay the government a fee, just like you pay a restaurant a fee for the service of bringing you food, and the government helps you. If you live in the forest and use no services, you can pay no taxes.
I like having roads and police officers and fire departments and ambulances and education being provided for everyone. That money's gotta come from somewhere, and no matter when it comes from, it's going to be called "tax".
I don't like "public highways" that have had the unintended (or perhaps insidiously intended) effect of suburban sprawl and dependence on automobiles (and oil). I dont like "education for everyone", especially if the content of such education is mandated by some central authority without regard for subjective preferences of parents. I don't like paying for fire protection for people who build their houses in locations that have brush fires every friggin' year .
I'll gladly pay "fees" for the services I choose or opt out otherwise, thank you very much.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
How about just the 5th amendment? Let's review:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Imagine if at the end of every year the DMV required your to file a form stating that you did not violate any traffic laws in your state for the entire year, and any laws you did break you must claim and pay fines for, and if the DMV discovers that you did not claim something, then you would be fined even heavier. This would never make it through the criminal court system because it would not accept the state's requirement since it violates the 5th amendment. Yet somehow when it comes to taxes this is thrown out the window.
Additionally, the requirements for a valid contract are typically thrown out the minute someone is required to sign a contract. Even in the Navy we could not be ordered to sign something because that was not considered a lawful order.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Uh huh.....because you're smarter than everyone.
This is exactly why the libertarian party doesn't take off.....most people LIKE roads and public education (we all went through it ourselves, after all; it's not THAT bad) and then people like you come up with weird conspiratorial theories about how the purpose of schools is indoctrination and educating our kids is a waste of money etc. etc. It's not like you are FORCED to go to public school, you can go to private schools, too. An educated populace is a good idea, and paying for it is also a good idea.
Qxe4
Moreover, it is one of the few kinds of taxation that requires no filing by anyone.
So just ditch the tax systems that require filing and go to land value.
Seastead this.
At the Federal level, this would work out pretty nicely. States and US Territories have totally different tax laws and it wouldn't work out there -- some people live in one state and work in another, some states have no tax, etc. Having less paperwork to process would help too. We get a property tax bill in the mail every December, with all of the amounts charged listed on it, and a total due at the bottom. Federal taxes would require some adjustments, but having a starting point would be less of a burden for the average taxpayer.
I think this would go a long way towards ensuring at least basic tax compliance. When you think about it, the tax system is very voluntary. If you're a wage earner, or get dividends/interest, or sell stocks and get capital gains, the IRS knows about all those transactions. They don't know about all the other stuff you report voluntarily - income from businesses you own, houses you rent, etc.
Most taxpayers' returns are incredibly simple, and contain some of the following:
Your tax due is figured as the income, minus deductions, minus tax already withheld. if the value is negative, you get a refund. If it's positive, you haven't prepaid enough of your tax and need to send in money. With the exception of your deductions and business income, the IRS knows almost all of these numbers based on the reporting from your financial institutions and employer. Why shouldn't they send you a starter return, basically saying "we think you owe this, if you have anything to add or deduct, provide proof and send us a check or collect your refund."
This might help crack down on the shady tax preparer services out there like H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and any number of guys working out of their car. They advertise to the poor and ignorant that they'll keep the IRS off their back and get them the biggest refund possible. In reality, someone with basic education in arithmetic can fill in a wage-earner's return. Look at Form 1040EZ on the IRS's website - it's one page. Form 1040 for more complex returns is two pages and neither of these require more than basic math and reading skills. TurboTax is great for filling in the forms, but a lot of people are scared of math, or the government, or filling in forms, and so they run to a tax preparer. If they had a "tax bill" with clear instructions showing how to claim deductions, it would eliminate a lot of needless preparer fees and also reduce the practice of way overwithholding taxes during the year so you get a huge refund. If people had that money during the year, maybe they wouldn't be in debt or be able to save something. As it is, they get a huge refund check and blow it on a TV or other large ticket item.
But anyway, back to the voluntary part. The IRS has millions of tax returns to process, and only so many revenue officers to do audits. The reality is that they go after the people they're going to get the most noncompliance from - high earners, small business owners and people with significant non-traceable income. For the majority of taxpayers, if you don't report it, and they don't have the numbers from another source, then they don't know about it. If you don't file a return they probably will leave you alone too. The bad part is when the audit does come and you haven't filed a return in 7 years...
It's also a good idea to simplify the tax code anyway. Limiting loopholes for high earners is a good thing. And remember that I said most tax returns are simple. Some parts of the tax law dealing with the timing of earnings, limits on certain deductions, etc. are very confusing and require a lot of reading to get right. That's a legitimate use of tax preparers...but the vast majority of people would be served well with a pre-filled tax return.
No. You are only free in your society/state as long as you conform to its laws and do not work effectively against that state. If you disobey its laws (or even its important social norms), or if you are working effectively to subvert or replace its authority, you will be done like dinner. What you have in a liberal democracy is a slightly freer state than in a less sophisticated, totalitarian state, but make no mistake, you are constrained.
The central authority and tax-collecting tendency of a state doesn't depend on how people individually want to organize things. It is an nergetically stable arrangement in a complex system, and similar complex systems will gravitate toward and fluctuate around roughly the same amount of authority/autonomy and taxation level, with some experimental variation to either side.
The tax rate (energy flow toward central authority) will be there, because co-operation automatically turns into at least slightly hierarchical co-operation, because it is more efficient to co-ordinate. (cost of communications and agreement enforcement closer to nlogn instead of n squared).
You can choose your form of hierarchical governance (if you are lucky), but you cannot choose not to be hierarchically governed to some extent. Hierarchies are latent in human society, and one will always emerge to fill a vacuum of coordination or authority. It is just a question of how big, how fair/law-based, how totalitarian etc. the emerged governance/coordination will be.
The left wing of the political spectrum tends to think tax rates/central organization should be higher. The right wing thinks it should be lower and autonomy of individuals (and of lower-level hierarchies "corporations") should be higher.
But this disagreement about tax rate is just a control system (feedback loop) that is finding a semi-acceptable middle-ground tax rate somewhere between 5% and 80%, and most probably somewhere between 15% and 45%).
Only the unwise or inexperienced think it should be zero percent. All you are doing if you say that is agreeing to be subject to whatever alternate forms of taxation will spring up in a "Mad Max" warlord-run / mafia run / corporate monopoly run / religious messiah run hodge-podge of warring hierarchies. But make no mistake. Either you will be the taxer, or you will be taxed. And if you are the taxer, you are constrained to act so as to maintain the consent of the populace, so you also are not free.
That is life. Just as life formed multi-cellular organisms, it also formed stable hierarchically organized societies of communicating, cooperating higher organisms. Yes there is Darwinian competition in there at all levels too of course, but co-operation (competition of partners at the next level of aggregation, if you will) is Darwinian too, and it is here because it survives as a stable pattern. You can try to fight it, but you will just end up in charge, or dead, and either way, you have lost your freedom.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You know, if Intuit were really smart they wouldn't fight this...but rather got to the IRS and ask, "how can we be contracted to help you."
They'd probably make more. ...
Ah! A proposal to bring back tax farming! (Or actually a suggestion that it would fit into Intuit's corporate strategy to bring it back.)
This privatization of the tax system (And we all know that "privatization" is always a Good Thing! Right?) is one of the things that brought on the French Revolution and sent tax farmers to the guillotines. Can we just move directly to that latter stage? Intuit's executive suite sounds ready for a visit from the Committee of Public Safety right now!
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
But, on second thought, why bother with details? I can't imagine the real-life combinatorics and the job programming that puppy of a database.
Uh huh.....because you're smarter than everyone.
Well, not exactly everyone... percentile-wise, maybe just "seven nines".
most people LIKE roads and public education..
Ya. Bummer that.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
But there are some serious flaws. Please carefully read the code.
They want to tax federal expenditures, which is ludicrous.
The tax should only be passed after the 16th is repealed. To do it before is sheer stupidity.
The constitution does not grant the Government the power to levy a consumption tax, which is further justification for amending the Constitution before passing the act (if you're one of those "we should follow the Constitution" types).
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Everybody's hot and bothered about the HOW, begging the question of the LEGITIMACY of taxes in the first place...
That's because that's a MUCH bigger question. People have been fighting the legitimacy of taxes for hundreds of years. That's not one with an easy answer (just go with that part) but having the government tell us what taxes we owe should make sense to EVERYONE. They certainly know if I get it wrong, so why the hell do I need to do it at all? I'm 25 and have filed taxes since I was 16. I've never needed to do anything but the basic stuff, aside from some education credits i got in college. I seriously wish they would just tell me what they thought i owed, and I could just verify if that is correct or not.
If intuit becomes irrelevant because of it, that's their own fucking fault. And honestly if they know how to adapt they'll be fine. They can offer more tax education services and help people with complex issues file their taxes. Of course they'd probably lose 98% of their business, but that's the price of progress. Downsize and keep moving on. Sure they don't want it, but we sure as hell shouldn't have a less efficient country just to support obsolete businesses.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Well, not exactly everyone... percentile-wise, maybe just "seven nines".
It doesn't matter man, if you're wrong, you're still wrong. Einstein was wrong, too. In the real world what matters is what's right, not how smart you are.
And in the political world, what matters is how well you communicate. It doesn't matter how right your idea is if you can't communicate it to other people. Since you're so smart, you shouldn't have any problem developing this skill. Work on it.
Qxe4
I think you know little of how waiters work then. They already don't declare their tips fully.
True but if they don't declare at least 8% of their sales as tip income it will almost certainly trigger an audit. This information is required to be reported on form 4070 and the IRS knows there is a high propensity to cheat.
things like totally would be good on their downloadable pdf files. I can't image it is that hard to do either! Personally I would think that you would log into the government website and then be shown your tax forms as they think you should have them. Any schedule B should be filled out, schedule A and C you need to do as you need to tell them many things on those forms. The main 1040 or 1040a or 1040 ez should have much already filled out on it and when you put in any changes to the ABCD forms they should populate the 10f0 ( all of this would be online at the fed site of course ). Then you can just add any other adjustments and it figures out your tax from the tables or whereever. It is possible for them to do and they should too.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I like those things too, which is why I pay my property taxes (which fund those tasks). All those local amenities are taxed at the local level...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
We can already do this in Australia. Electronic submissions have been around for at least the last five years, and you only need to fill out every section of the form the first time you submit electronically. In subsequent years, and info which has not changed (such as address, employer details etc) doesn't need to be manually entered, but is auto-filled from the Tax Office servers. There was also a suggestion recently that they should simplify the system even further, and remove the need for people who only need a "simple" tax return to submit a form at all (I'm not sure how they were going to define "simple"). This supposedly would mean about two million less tax returns every year.
I have my own conflict of interest here that nobody has mentioned so far: On the one hand to keep what is legally and morally mine and on the other hand make it as easy for the thug to steal it from me after calling it something like - - - tax.
In New Zealand our Inland Revenue Department does this for all employed salary earners. If all of your income is from salary and bank interest you never even see an annual tax return. They even write-off small amounts owing. You do have the option of completing a tax return manually if desired, or if you have some income unaccounted for.
If you are self employed, or have income from sources that do not automatically deduct income tax then you do need to fill out a return, but it's relatively easy to do so.
lizardb0y
http://www.vintage8bit.com/
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Federal taxation for local benefits, just taxation in general.
And what was the point of that political manifesto you wrote there? Because cooperation is necessary we should resign ourselves to being servants? Because 100% freedom is impossible we should go for 0%? I think the only constraint that there should be on an individual is the constraint from constraining others.
The point about that the responsability is from the taxpayer even if the data supplied by the government is also true in Spain.
Also, I find surprising your issue with Intuit, here the Agencia Tributaria (IRS) provides a program for free to fill (and directly print) your tax forms. You enter all the data from your household and then you can decide to view the totals for different options (mainly paying with your husband/wife/couple or individually). If you have had several jobs, you do not ever have to calculate the total to put it inside; you put the data of all the jobs and it just shows in the form the totals.
Why can't
In the US, we do whatever rich special interests tell us to do
Pretty much, so far.
Look at the health care industry, and still reform is apparently about to fail.
And the reason it's failing is because in the end the "reform" was pretty much all about forcing people to buy insurance while eliminating pesky low-cost insurance polices like catastrophic coverage through mandating a fairly large minimum set of coverage, greatly enlarging insurance companies coffers.
So on the one hand you seem to dislike that we to what special interests tell us to, then on the other lament the loss of a bill basically written by special interests. Confusing at the very least.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They'd know it was a lie. He doesn't work here any more...
I have the same beef here in Canada. The major effort is in tax software is the code to grind the calculations. Governments should provide open source libraries that accept an XML document of inputs (income, deductions, etc.) and spit out an XML document acceptable to their tax submission web service. Then Intuit (and anyone else - Linux included) can easily wrap and skin the library and produce a reasonably reliable tax preparation package. Features that gain market share would be in ease of use (UI), importing data from related accounting packages, price, etc.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
I'd like to think it's a function of some encryption...
e.g. any tax form you receive has a code on it which decrypts information a place like turbotax has access to
the point of it?
Oh damn, you mean I didn't shake your political identity to its core?
It's not so much a political manifesto as an explanation of some specific, even if not yet widely known or accepted implications of the thermodynamics of complex systems.
Also known perhaps as "realpolitik"
(with a dash of neo-(non-racist) sociobiology).
"I think the only constraint that there should be on an individual is the constraint from constraining others."
I'm going to give you credit and assume that you realize that is self-contradictory.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It IS a conflict of interest for the Government to be involved in the preparation of tax returns. I don't know about you, but I don't want people with guns and the authority to use them to be the ones who tell me how much I am supposed to pay in taxes or how much I overpaid and they're giving back to me.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Thank you thank you for using the term "begging the question" correctly, it's so tiresome to see people using it to mean "raising the question".
Thanks for noticing. That was actually my primary purpose for the posting.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I had tax overpayments from 8 years that were owed to me (>$2000). IRS never said a thing. One year, I had an underpayment of $115. after penalties and fees and interest, IRS (first communication) sent me an "intent to file lein" letter unless I paid them $480. if they owe you money, they'll never look for you
In God we trust,
everyone else we firewall!!
This is a stupid expensive duplication of effort. It's probably not necessary to amass all of these stupid little forms, since the government has the information anyway. But what is government without stupid duplicated effort?
If you look at any money, it says quite clearly-United States of America. It does not say "your name". It is quite clear that it is their money, not yours....you only get to hold it briefly.
Here is australia we get to do it all online. Every year the ATO (tax office) releases software that can be used to compile and submit your tax information. When it runs, it gives you the option to obtain all information it can, including income, health insurance, social security payments, education debts and more obscure things. This system means my tax return involves running this application, making sure the information is correct, enter in some non-invented deductions and hit submit. Takes ten minutes, and the return is processed in a few days. It seems very hard to believe that Australia can manage to make a system that the US considers no viable.
It is absolutely disgusting and shows yet again how corrupt and ineffective the American government is. What happened in Massachusetts shows how upset we are with American insurance companies, banks, and now this.
Vote out the incumbents in 2010!
http://saveie6.com/
most people LIKE roads and public education
The roads, I pay plenty for - currently for my wife and me it's over $1300/yr before you count gasoline tax. And I never went to public school until I was 22...
Having said that, I think that the problem with libertarianism is the extraordinary number of crazy nerds it attracts - the Randroids (Rand herself was a bit goofy but not stupid). There are plenty of hard Left groups that do just fine with the youth that refer to sheeple and so forth, so abusing the populace at large seems to work (this is the group largely responsible for the fact that Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton is the president, after all). I've known a few Randroids, and the biggest problem they have is an inability to understand that some people are just assholes because they like being assholes, so they act as though society can be organized on the principle of everyone acting in their own purely rational interest.
Mind you, if the government actually tried to implement this, privacy advocates would be screaming in the asiles (very likely many of the same people currently complaining here)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Intuit must really hate Colorado's Net File system. It's easy, relatively fast, and costs nothing. You still have to fill in the stupid forms, but it's 90% just copying the numbers from the equivalent lines of your federal tax forms. Paying Intuit extra to get the Colorado state version simply isn't worth the cost if your tax situation allows you to file online, and almost all individual returns can be filed online.
The employer submits PAYE data to the South African Revenue Service (SARS). Once registered as a tax payer, all you need to do is sign in to the online portal, and click a button accepting the pre-prepared return. End of story. Tax refund (if applicable) is transferred to your account by EFT within a week. No fuss, no mess, no hassle. What a pleasure.
If you have additional items to declare, you simply enter the details online, posting supporting documentation if necessary. Again, minimal fuss.
Strikes me as truly insane that while most of Europe, and 'third-world' countries like SA, can get this right -- the USA, which supposedly is one of the most IT-savvy countries in the world, is still in the dark ages of taxation.
Seems we have a new category of monopolistic industry in USA -- "Big Tax" !
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
Each administration, bank or firm sends you a paper each year telling you how much you earn from them and how much you must declare to our IRS. I've seen tiny errors in complicated situations, nothing to complain about. Having a centralized state has some good sides.
I must only add things that the administration cannot know (charities, deductible professional expenses, tax credit for energy savings...). Of course it's all online for years (and it works rather well).
It helps that we do not need software to compute all this for us, I don't know anyone on salary who uses one. It seems to be a hot topic in Germany though but they always over-engineer everything.
Christophe (Don't hesitate to point out my spelling and grammar mistakes, I want to learn - Thanks).
but yet even those living in the forest are using the services of the government to ensure that there is a forest to live in and that the forest does not get invaded
Because it would help all of us to navigate the minefield that is the US tax system. Forget Intuit. It they are not part of the solution, they are a problem. I for one would love to pay my taxes as timely as possible, not a cent more and not a cent less. If they have all my info from the previous years and my employers, then help me be a better citizen by entering my information and help me prepare correctly. They get their money and not have to waste money chasing after incorrectly filed taxes. It is time to upgrade there system. They have the funds to do it, Do It. That will also help me save some money from not having to find a CPA
I actually been saying (to friends) for a long time that the whole concept of income tax just isn't worth it. It's more complex than it needs to be and unfairly taxes based on what you make, not how much you need. I even wrote up my solution a week ago as a blog entry: http://pontifications.hardakers.net/thoughts/in-which-wes-rewrites-the-tax-code/
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
This sounds like the perfect opportunity for a universal Freedom of Information Act demand.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
In Finland you get a piece of paper with everything filled out. You only need to mail it back if you make a modification, i.e., the tax office's information is out-of-date. So, yeah, the US is behind the times in this regard. Although, I guess, making a system work for over half a billion people is probably more complicated than making one work for five million people (int the case of Finland), not to mention the infamous complexity of the US tax system.
In au we've had something like this for a couple of years - it's great! makes it so much easier. You can even take data from previous years tax to autofill bits.
The biggest benefit is no need for an accountant for most people.
Quit relying on mommy gov't to save you.