Why do Americans have to pay much to file their tax returns when the IRS knows?

Answered in the subtitle of the article: "Filing taxes could be free and easy, but tax-prep companies and antitax politicians have fought to make it expensive, complicated and annoying."

What thoughts on doing away with income tax altogether? There is already tax on sales. No reason to have tax on source as well. Tiered tax rates based on how much you're buying or how many things you're buying can allow taxing less from the poor. The government should easily be able to structure it so that their net revenue is more or less same. Imagine the amount of overhead and inefficiencies that can be eliminated altogether.

How would the IRS know?<p>Are they keeping track of whether I got married or divorced, or had a kid, or a death in the family, or a disability? Of whether I bought or sold a house, took out a HELOC, or started a home office, or installed solar panels?<p>Are they keeping track of whether I sold something for $5 on eBay, or of how much my sales tax was for groceries, even when I pay in cash? Do they have a file keeping track of my charitable contributions? If I&#x27;m a teacher who uses their own money to pay for classroom supplies, the IRS already knows this? They know whether the kids are at day care when I&#x27;m working? They know how much I spent on medical costs during the year? Whether I took a college class?<p>To the extent the IRS knows, I would consider that a bad thing.

The better question is, why do we pay such extreme taxes in the first place? A lot of state&#x2F;local budgets seems to be well kept, but the federal budget is essentially cash incineration.

My wife and I file pretty standard forms every year--no complicated deductions, only 2-3 W2s, maybe a couple 1099s and a 1098-E. For the first few years of our marriage, I did taxes by hand as a point of pride and enjoyed it (yeah, I know--most say yuck). Around 2006ish, I got a copy of TurboTax in a bundle with my first MacBook Pro and I&#x27;ve never looked back. It&#x27;s absolutely worth it to me for $40 to me for the ease of e-filing, standardized output with all worksheets and forms, and speed of return via direct deposit. I get $40 is a lot to some people and tbh, I fully support a sliding percentage tax system with NO returns, but the vast majority of people get a return anyway, why not count the $40 out of it to be sure your returns were done right?<p>Oh, and yea, I still quite enjoy tax-night when I get to sit down with my reciepts and 109x&#x27;s and file, though I will say I always mail my state returns in to avoid the additional $20 fee for e-file.

Given the existence of totally free federal and state e-filing options, the situation is analogous to bemoaning sales of Coke when generic soda exists, and hoping that government soda will put Coke out of business. Now that consumers are not inhibited, what remains is a marketing problem.