Dealing with the IRS is never fun because it normally means you owe money but I have to say they’re quite competent (once you get a hold of them) and their digital services seem to be improving constantly.
Nice to see a branch of government actively trying to be user friendly (in the ways they can control). The IRS can’t do much about our insanely complex tax laws but they can make it easier to file.
The IRS helpline was much better back in 2009 when I needed some advice on a special case that the average tax preparer didn't understand. They forwarded me to a IRS specialist that knew how to handle it and went step my step in filling out the form and saving me $5k compared to what two tax preparers did. I think the Republicans back then gutted the IRS so they wouldn't audit the wealthy.
Can we aspire to some baseline level of truth seeking where a phrase like “literally explicit” requires even the slightest bit of evidence?
In this case, it wouldn’t have even been hard to find that evidence, though you are assertion is oversimplified:
“ for the vast majority of the population, most of the pain of tax compliance could be eliminated by a few keystrokes at IRS headquarters. So why don’t we do it? Two reasons. One is lobbying by the tax preparation industry to discourage states and the feds from developing easier tax-paying systems, as California recently did. The second is lobbying by anti-tax conservatives. When the Golden State implemented its ReadyReturn system, it did so over the objections of Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pressure group Americans for Tax Reform, which fears that if taxes become less annoying voters might be less unhappy about paying them.”
https://slate.com/business/2012/04/grover-norquist-and-h-r-b...
All of this took me 120 seconds with Perplexity AI. As we strive towards being a better nation, or at least a better community, I beg that future micro-polemicists invest that much time before hitting “post”
I think aspiring to a baseline level of truth seeking is harder than initially thought. Watchdogs like allsides.com consider slate a pretty left-leaning publication[1], especially in 2012[2] when this article was published. At least they were aware of it though.
What has changed in the republican party's stance on taxes in the last 22 years? Maybe nothing, but the point is that it actually is hard to assume that it's an explicit part of the Republican platform to make taxes difficult to file by referencing an old article from a left-leaning magazine that actually doesn't mention the word "republican" once.
Explicit policy stances like this should be well known by most adult Americans, but this is an international forum so people are going to mention such basic differences without citations.
I don’t think anyone should need to give sources for such basic political stances as where each party takes on Abortion etc. This isn’t controversial, the parties are trying to get their message out so people will vote accordingly.
This case is a bit different, because it's not merely a policy preference, but an accusation of a bad faith metagame strategy of "intentionally breaking government and wile complaining that it's broken".
You may disagree with a policy, but that doesn’t mean the party isn’t completely upfront about it.
Meta game stuff does well in fundraising and the primaries even if not the general election because everyone already shares most of the party’s core beliefs. It’s all about convincing people your strategy will get those core ideas in place. Voter disenfranchisement being a popular example.
Also, many positions seemed stupid to many voters. That doesn’t make them useless as long as there is some perceived net benefit.
To be fair I think the conservative objection is not quite that filing taxes needs to be annoying. The concern is more that automated tax calculation makes it easier for people to be blissfully unaware of how much of their money is going to taxes. Even now most people have minimal awareness of their tax burden thanks to automated tax withholding.
This conservative’s objection is to building the IRS data collection and analysis infrastructure needed to support “one click” tax returns for even just the most important parts of our absurdly complex tax code. Many here seem to think this is only constrained by tax software lobbying, and I think that’s naive.
Take the EITC: It’s one of the most important redistributive/anti-poverty components of the tax code. It’s also a massive source of fraud, much of which is potentially unintentional, as the eligibility requirements are complex.
Do we want the IRS tracking whether a supermarket cashier living with her boyfriend and her child is contributing more than 50% to the household’s total income? What if they break up 9 months into the year and he moves out? Does she need to send the IRS a notice?
One doesn't have to belabor the obvious unless someone asks for a cite. Stating the non-obvious/unintuitive/controversial does requires citations, or you're going to get downvoted.
Those are apples and oranges. You can submit corrections for much longer than 1.5 years. Why be afraid if you filed correctly? Just have some confidence.
In the context of fear, no they are not apples and oranges.
"Why be afraid if you filed correctly? Just have some confidence."
LOL. Or seven years down the road...get audited? Why can't the IRS have some confidence in its collection process? Why can't the window close are two or three year?
If you think confidence is what gets you through an IRS audit, you're a fool.
I think if this is the case one should hate the Republicans (policies) more, as being the ones explicitly breaking stuff, but yeah it's easier to generalize.
Some governments will offer an "official opinion". Basically you explain your situation to one of their members of staff, who will then reply with how to declare it on the tax form.
If you declare what they say, and it turns out to be wrong, they won't punish you for it.
There is something similar in the US called (iirc) an "IRS Letter" - which is basically the IRS saying how they interpret the law.
It is not binding, because they may be wrong. As long as you act in good faith, you can disagree and could end up in tax court or in real court, and the IRS could lose.
If you're not in the "make wage, pay tax" basic group, you will want to seriously investigate the tax advantages available to you, and how to take advantage of them.
Unfortunately many of our politicians actively try to sabotage the IRS based on some fantasy about making them unable to collect income tax, or the very real problem of not giving them enough funding to go after rich tax dodgers.
Yeah, everyone complains about the IRS, but when I've had issues and contacted a human, they've been extremely polite and helpful. I got audited [1] a few years ago, which I was expecting to be a nightmare, but I was able to call an office, chatted with a human for a bit, and they walked me through what I had to do to fix it. A few e-faxes later, everything was resolved.
People love to complain about government incompetence, but I think it's easy to forget that fundamentally it's "just humans" behind the scenes, and most humans aren't sociopaths.
[1] Forgot to add a document for a deduction I did, totally my fault.
Nice to see a branch of government actively trying to be user friendly (in the ways they can control). The IRS can’t do much about our insanely complex tax laws but they can make it easier to file.