> Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee in June proposed a budget rider that would prohibit funds to be used for the IRS to create a government-run tax preparation software, unless approved by a group of House and Senate committees.
The move “safeguards the IRS from an obvious conflict of interest where the tax collector becomes the tax preparer,” the bill’s summary states.
The one that affects most people is that the IRS system is "eventually consistent", but they do not currently have the information needed to file your return on the date your return is due.
If you don't believe me, request your transcript-of-records* on your account filing date. Then request it again in early fall. The latter will, IME, be complete while the former will not.
The one that affects only a subset of people is that many deductible items that go into tax returns are never shared with the IRS at all and only the taxpayer knows about them (today).
You're technically correct, but in most cases the date the original form was filed with the IRS was around the deadline. It just takes them a while to upload them all.
But we could also just make the filing deadline October for individuals. Most of those late arriving forms are K1s for partnerships that only file in April.
Technically, the use of the software isn't compulsory. You can still fill out the physical tax forms and mail them in.
That said, I am solidly on board with the IRS just computing the taxes for taxpayers and sending them a bill. Taxpayers who dispute the bill can then just file their own taxes as normal.
All your financial transactions are already reported by the other parties (including most foreign ones: I have an offshore account that reports to FATCA).
Your personal data (age, dependents, marriage) is also in databases recording births and status changes.
There would be a conflict of interest if the IRS was incentived to maximize tax revenues. Are they? Does anyone at the IRS get paid more if tax revenues are up in a particular year?
I would think that they're only incentivized to accurately apply the existing tax laws, and those laws are written by a separate entity.
The move “safeguards the IRS from an obvious conflict of interest where the tax collector becomes the tax preparer,” the bill’s summary states.
That’s a hard R in Republican