This is the kind of thing that both parties should be able to agree on, anyone defending this ridiculous system is likely some kind of corporate shill.
Having a federal website to file has been a great step in the right direction. What’s preventing us from going further? Oh, Republicans think it’s anti-business because then TurboTax can’t make their billions, got it.
Vote for people who will increase funding to the IRS so they can manage all this.
The reason it’s been like this for so long is because they don’t have the manpower or (until recently) the technology to handle the sheer numbers. Lobbying from TurboTax and shit also played a big part, but even without that, they straight up can’t afford to do all this when they’ve been strangled of funding from decades of conservative legislation.
Yes but no. They have the numbers already reported to them for most of us. A proper database and front end would spit out the magic number. So it’s a one time project that they can’t fund because of lobbyists. Other countries have had this for decades.
Last April, I asked the tax man how much I owed, and he said $350. Then I said, “you ain’t no tax man! You the loch ness monster!”
IRS:
You gotta do a bunch of math, and if you fuck it up, you go to jail
if you fuck it up, you go to jail
No, no you don’t. This is an actual child’s understanding of how it works.
If you fuck up they often don’t even notice unless it’s substantial, otherwise they just send you a notice. You have to be willfully refusing to pay taxes for a while, repeatedly, before you’re in trouble (tax evasion) or commiting actual tax fraud.
Why would the IRS send you to jail for making mistakes on your taxes? Where taxes are now paying for your incarceration, and you can’t work to make the income to pay taxes.
One of the many reasons I’m an anarchist.
