I never understood why the Revenue can't provide a set of simple online forms for tax returns like India does. Heck, India provided Excel sheets with VBA script for many years, that produced an XML which can be submitted as tax filing. Tax filing is now a 15-minute affair for a salary-only income in India.
The complexity is a feature not a bug. If you have more complexity, you have more opportunities for loopholes. Those loopholes are currently used by those wealthy enough to hire creative firms to help them get through them and minimize owed taxes
If there’s one outcome I really hope from AI automating work, it’s taking away the advantage the monied class has in this regard. Then perhaps there’s less purpose for the complexity
Maybe the AI will create a level playing field and make the tax prep / loophole industry collapse.
Or maybe the free models will start responding with
"""
It looks like you're asking for help with tax preparation. I recommend our designated AI tax service [link to service that asks you to upgrade your plan or pay a one-time fee].
"""
They are operating free models at a loss now, but at some point they are going to have to turn a profit. At that point tax prep becomes a revenue stream for AI as well.
Of course, this is not to say they always are stupid or illiterate, it's again usually just another form of exploitation, they don't have (or feel they don't) time to read it.
Which is arguably explicit exploitation/enslavement - the Walmart door greeter doesn't have a difficult job, however their role doesn't allow them to do anything that would benefit themselves. I wouldn't care if they were reading their phones or a book, but noo... can't have the peasants educating themselves.
And they aren't paid enough, so when they return home, they likely don't have any time after needing to perform meal prep, taking a second job, etc.
The USA is a third world country in many respects.
They could still live side by side. You could still have a system where you have simplified filing where for 99.99% of the people you can just pretty much fill in one or two fields of what you made and something like that and even maybe get this data directly from the employers. That's how it works in Sweden. And then for the people who have complicated business, you could have a more complicated form where you need to hire a lawyer or accountant to do it. This is just assuming you don't care about whether or not there are loopholes for people. Like that's a political decision maybe more, because I guess the people defending them would say that there are good reasons they exist and you know wealth creation and so on. But it makes no sense to make it so complicated for people who have very simple lives where they have one employer who is paying them a salary and that's it.
My entire life (in the US) there has been the idea floated that our tax code should be simplified to the point where filing can be done on something the size of a postcard.
We absolutely could do that, but the government has no incentive to do so. At least in the US, taxes are a form of control, a source of power for those in charge, a political chip for elections, and a mechanism to further the wealth divide. Taxes are not primarily meant to fund our government, and definitely don't include goals related to making the average person's life easier.
This idea is "floated" by the exact people who make taxes complicated in the US.
Every time they insist they want to "simplify" taxes, they demonstrate that what that means is just another tax break to wealthy businesses.
The DOGE team shut down a simple tax filing system the IRS had freely made available.
It's republicans. Stop saying "Government" when it is republicans
Form 1040 isn't even complicated! But republicans have convinced millions that the IRS is going to black bag them for missing a decimal point somewhere.
Guess what! The IRS is not funded enough to care! They will send you an automated form saying "We fixed it for you, here's how much you owe/are getting back". You can even ignore that letter and you won't end up in prison! They just seized a couple of my state tax returns!
The issues you raise are important, they also aren't partisan. The specific system used for filing, while important, has nothing to do with how simply or complex our tax code itself is. If they want to make it possible for me to file half a dozen forms through an IRS-run portal rather than TurboTax, great but that doesn't simplify the tax law.
Both parties are responsible for the complexity of our tax code, how long they allowed TurboTax to run the show, and how poorly the tax revenue is spent.
>The complexity is a feature not a bug. If you have more complexity, you have more opportunities for loopholes. Those loopholes are currently used by those wealthy enough to hire creative firms to help you get through them
Agreed that the complexity is a feature but it's not for the rich ( though the rich will take advantage of it, and why not? ) . It's mostly for the powers that be. If there were a 'flat' tax ( and one could argue what constitutes a flat tax) the rich will be more willing to pay that flat tax.
I'd say complexity support a very large govt, keeping several people employed including accountants, tax software companies etc. It serves the parasite class.
> If there were a 'flat' tax [...] the rich will be more willing to pay
That's just because moving from progressive-taxation to a flat-tax reduces how much they pay!
The "simplicity" of the math done by their usual accounting firm that does their taxes for them is irrelevant by comparison.
_________
To illustrate why the burden shifts, suppose the nation of Elbonia needs a constant $540 to operate, and it moves from a progressive tax to a flat tax.
This year, progressive taxation, rising %:
90 peasants each earn $10 and are taxed 20% -> $2 per peasant.
10 nobles each earn $90 and are taxed 40% -> $36 per noble.
Total collection is $540.
Next year, flat tax, same % for all:
90 peasants each earn $10 and are taxed 30% -> $3 per peasant.
10 nobles each earn $90 and are taxed 30% -> $27 per noble.
Total collection is $540.
It should be no surprise that most of the Elbonian nobles are "willing" to see that change happen. Meanwhile, the peasants that are already living paycheck-to-paycheck have to plan how to cut back on luxuries like keeping their teeth.
It's worth pointing out that the Treasury takes in tax revenues throughout the year. The sources of that income are:
50% Payroll Income Tax. 35% Social Security Taxes. 7% Business Taxes. 7% Excise Taxes.
70 years ago they were:
25% Payroll Income Tax. 25% Social Security Taxes. 25% Business Taxes. 25% Excise Taxes.
I think the priority is fixing this distribution to levels which were historically perceived as being more fair. The wealthy are one problem. The oversized corporations are the everlasting machine which drives them.
Excise taxes are effectively sales tax but only on specific products. This is less economically efficient than broad-based taxes unless the thing you're taxing is something you're specifically trying to discourage (e.g. cigarettes) rather than having the purpose of generating revenue, but since 1955 the government has become more inclined to ban things it doesn't like than tax them.
In a global economy higher business taxes just cause large international corporations to incorporate in a different jurisdiction, which gives them an advantage over smaller purely domestic corporations, which is bad.
Social Security is already taking in less money than it's paying out. Reducing the Social Security tax would imply reducing Social Security benefits, since that's where it goes, unless you're proposing a more significant reform of the system in general.
The size of corporations and the amount they're taxed are two entirely different things. Indeed, the tax code does a lot of things to encourage corporations to be larger, like taxing dividends and capital gains after corporate income has already been taxed, which creates a tax preference for leaving the money inside of an existing corporation rather than investing it in starting a new competitor.
> In a global economy higher business taxes just cause large international corporations to incorporate in a different jurisdiction, which gives them an advantage over smaller purely domestic corporations, which is bad.
This is the common wisdom. I doubt it. The legal system in the USA is worth paying for. If these companies really want to submit to European law, then, they're welcome to it. I don't think that loss actually hurts domestic businesses but helps the massively.
Companies are subject to the laws in all the places they do business. They pay income tax in the place they have net income, which is something that they control themselves.
Corporate income tax is essentially designed wrong. Property tax is where the buildings are, payroll tax is where the workers are, sales tax is where the customers are, corporate income tax is where the profit is. Which they just put in the country with the lowest taxes.
It's basically this: Employees in the US get paid $1B to design a product that employees in China get paid $1B to manufacture and then it gets sold to customers in Europe for $3B. The net profit is then $1B, but where is it? If the subsidiary in Ireland pays the subsidiary in California $2B for the design then it's in California. If they instead pay the subsidiary in Shenzhen $2B to manufacture it then it's in China. If they instead pay them each $1B then it stays in Ireland. And then the company picks based on whichever one has lower taxes.
There is no real way around this because in real arms length negotiations it would depend on which subsidiary has more leverage against the others, but in modern companies what that really comes from is the strength of the company's brand or customer lock-in as a result of patents or copyrights, since without them the profit would be negligible because there would be no barriers to competitors entering the market and causing razor-thin margins, but all of those things are easy to move into whatever jurisdiction you like since they only exist on paper.
So international corporations pay taxes in Ireland and purely domestic corporations pay taxes in California which puts the domestic corporations at a disadvantage when the taxes in California are higher.
To get accurate numbers you need to scale either the before or after numbers to reflect changes in the effective overall tax rate over the time period.
You also need to look at overall tax burden, not just federal. It used to be that the states levied taxes and did stuff. Now mostly what happens is that the feds levy taxes and piss it back onto the states in the form of grants to do qualifying stuff.
IDK how this distorts the percentages but it certainly does.
I disagree. This is a way of looking at _where_ the government funding comes from or it's a way at looking at the _share_ of burden by source. The overall tax rates don't actually matter in this case and only implicate how that share is distributed within the group.
The point I'm trying to make is businesses used to carry a more significant fraction of federal spending during a period where they had less overall influence relative to the citizen.
Now we're inverted. Businesses have excepted themselves from most of the costs leaving that burden to the citizen, but we live in a country where business needs are put well ahead of the citizens.
Another issue is that super wealthy folks don't get their money from regular wages. They borrow money from banks using their assets (e.g., stocks) as collateral. They pay back the loan at relatively low rates. The borrowed money is not taxable income.
>That's just because moving from progressive-taxation to a flat-tax reduces how much they pay!
They would be more than willing to be flat taxed at their current rate because it would still save them the hassle and the stress and the uncertainty.
Now, it would likely reduce what they pay eventually, because if you flat taxed the whole populous at their rate there'd be a new government pretty quick, but that's not the point.
> That's just because moving from progressive-taxation to a flat-tax reduces how much they pay!
That's what everybody says but then you look at effective tax rates in real life and the highest ones are paid by people like doctors rather than billionaires because the complicated system is the thing that allows the billionaires to pay less.
Meanwhile you don't need a complicated marginal rate system to get a progressive effective rate curve. Just give everybody a tax credit in a fixed amount and then use the same rate for everyone. Here's your table when you do that:
90 peasants each earn $10 and are taxed 42.5% and receive a $2.25 credit -> $2 per peasant, effective rate 20%
10 nobles each earn $90 and are taxed 42.5% and receive a $2.25 credit -> $36 per noble, effective rate 40%.
These numbers, of course, assume that as in your example you need the average effective rate (by earnings) to be 30%. By comparison, for example, US federal receipts as a percent of GDP have been stable at ~17% of GDP since the end of WWII (and were dramatically lower before that). Your numbers would be more in line with what would happen if both federal and all state taxes (including e.g. property tax) were replaced with this system.
That's not a progressive-tax brackets versus flat-tax thing.
That's a "having different rules for different ways of making money" thing.
> the complicated system is the thing that allows the billionaires to pay less
Something true of a parts is not necessarily true of the whole, and vice-versa. The reason billionaires pay less than we might expect comes from relatively simple factors, not because the tax-code is too complex for poor people to get the same result.
> That's a "having different rules for different ways of making money" thing.
That's the thing which is a consequence of the existing complexity, which in turn is a consequence of trying to do brackets by income.
A flat rate tax is you collect VAT on everything no exceptions, send everyone a check in a fixed amount as the credit to make it progressive no exceptions, and you're done.
Different marginal rates is oops, if you use VAT then rich people have poor people go to the store for them so you have to use income tax and track everybody's income. But some people get income from investments and then it's not realized until they cash out, which allows a bunch of fancy tax dodges, but trying to tax unrealized gains has a bunch of other serious problems like liquidity and valuation. Also, you didn't really mean to tax everyone's retirement savings, so now you need a bunch of stuff like 401(k) to undo the thing you didn't really mean to do, and now you have some more complexity. And it continues like this until you turn around and doctors are paying higher taxes than billionaires because billionaires have more resources to navigate all the complexity.
The numbers for Elbonia are unlike the US but you can use numbers to say all kinds of magical things.
US median income $75,000
top 10% $149000
top 5% $352000
Which is 203000 more, therefore half of the top 10% must earn $101500 less than $149000 to have an average of $149000 which is only $47500 which is 0.6 times median.
If you tax them 40% they have only 0.36 times median left.
See?
top 1% $749000 is 397000 more than the top 5%, therefore 4/5 of the top 5% earns $99250 less than $352000 which is only $252750 which is only about 3 time median.
top 0.1% $3312693 is 2563693 more than the top 1%, therefore 9/10 of the top 1% earns $284854 less than 749000 which is only 464145 which is only about 6 times median.
I don't know where all the money went but it isn't here.
I have no idea what you're trying to demonstrate with all that, it looks like a 1+1=3 Chewbacca Defense.
Moving from a progressive-tax to a flat-tax (with the same total receipts) will lower the tax-burden on one group and raise it on another. You don't even need numbers to understand it: It's the same as how leveling a see-saw will result in one end moving up and one end moving down.
___________
To offer a specific critique:
> top 10% $149000
Correct, $149,000 is the hypothetical income of a single person sitting in-between the bottom 90% and the top 10% of income. This means every single person in the top 10% earns at least $149,000 per year.
> therefore half of the top 10% must earn $101500 less than $149000
No no no, something has gone Very Very Wrong here.
It is literally impossible for anybody in the 10% to be earning less than the lowest-earning member of that group.
I think you're reaching for the wrong statistics. You want averages of subgroups, rather than medians or percentiles which tell about about where boundaries lie. In my original Elbonia example, knowing "There are peasants and nobles and the poorest noble has an income of $90" wouldn't give you enough information to work with.
The first chart shows an ascending staircase of tax-rates as each group has a higher average income (not shown) than the prior group, indicating a progressive tax scheme.
With a flat tax, every bar would be the same moderate height. We don't automatically have enough information to say exactly where the horizontal line would be, but clearly it has to be somewhere between today's "Bottom 50%" and "Top 1%", meaning those groups would see a tax-hike and a tax-cut respectively.
________
Another approach is the next chart, "High-Income Taxpayers Paid the Highest Average Income Tax Rates".
Much like my "many peasants" and "few nobles" groups, this chart has 6 groups. It shows the smallest group, the "top 1% of people" took in 22% of the taxable income, and paid 40% of the taxes, and so on down the line for the other chunks.
Under a flat tax, any group with X% of the income would also pay X% of the taxes. In other words, the right-hand stack would shift to look like the left-hand stack.
Knowing this, you can tell which groups' "taxes paid" boxes would grow (tax hike, boo) and which which groups' would shrink (tax cut, yay).
The tax brackets are not what make taxes complicated. Knowing how to categorize different types of income is what makes taxes complicated.
The flat tax would not make tax preparation any bit easier. They only thing it would do would be to eliminate progressive taxation. In other words, the rich would pay less. The poor would pay more.
>The flat tax would not make tax preparation any bit easier.
there are many way to 'define' a 'flat' tax. My way would be a fixed sum. Not a fixed rate. ( yes the rich pay the same as poor) This would ofcourse have it's own if/buts but it would eliminate 90%+ complexity.
The ideal situation would be be no income tax and many other forms of taxation.
A fixed sum is impossible. It would have to be so low that everyone could pay it, no matter how poor. It's basically a proposal to eliminate government (meaning anarchy, chaos, and inevitably the rise of some new order that will, of necessity, go back to a more rational system of taxation).
> The flat tax would not make tax preparation any bit easier.
This is absolutely not true in the USA. Income from different sources is taxed differently.
Example: The forms distinguish between short term capital gains, long term capital gains, and e.g., income from government bonds is taxed differently at lower levels of government.
This is exactly correct. That said, I'm quite surprised how many people struggle to understand how progressive tax bands/brackets work. It maybe doesn't help that the (right wing) media often portray them dishonestly (i.e. claiming that a 50% tax band starting at $100k/year means you would pay $50k/year in tax if you earn $100k/year)
Tangentially, the same motivated-disinformation occurs with Social Security.
It's best-understood as an insurance-policy (OASDI is literally named that way) against dying poor and old/orphaned/disabled. With an insurance policy, it's normal for my month's premium to be spent on somebody else's current tragedy, it's normal for me to expect no cash if the Bad Thing never actually happens to me, and it's normal that there's no asset for me to pass on to my heirs.
However wall-street bankers can't make tons of profits competing under that model, so instead they try to trick citizens into misunderstanding what the model is. They want people to think it's a government-managed investment account instead, where every person is filling an individual bucket of "their" money that will someday be tipped back out for them.
With this deception, their job is much easier: They just need to say that they'll be a nicer manager of the accounts than the government is, because they'll give you more choices for managing "your" money. It's dishonest because the two things are fundamentally different in how they work and what they're good for.
Much of the complexity is to close loopholes. Many things in the tax code start out fairly simple, then people find ways to use them in ways that were not intended, and then the simple thing becomes complex as additional rules are added to try to fix that. This can iterate and what started out as a couple of sentences that most people knew what they intended becomes a few pages of convoluted rules.
The UK has online forms for this, even for businesses, but is moving away from this as part of "Making Tax Digital" - i.e. they are axing paper forms to doing away with the online equivalents as well.
Then again, most people here who have salary only income do not have to fill in a tax return at all - only if they have certain types of income (self-employment, capital gains or investment income) above a threshold.
I've been doing Self Assessment for 25 years. In the first few years it was fill in a colourful paper form which won awards for clear English etc. Nowadays it is online with many details pre-filled in. At the end you can download a .pdf that looks exactly like the paper form or not bother.
Something like ~40% of US individual taxpayers only need to file a form 1040 [1] for their federal tax return.
Another large group will need that plus a small number of other forms, most of which will be easy to fill. For example if they are getting a tax credit to help with health insurance costs there is form for that. That one's easy to fill out because you will be mailed a report that contains the information needed for the form. The report is in a standard format, and the instructions will be of the form copy line X form the report to line Y of the form.
If your income is just salary plus some investment income from investments like mutual funds you don't have enough deductions to be worth itemizing [2], it generally is pretty straightforward.
[2] In the US you have a choice between "itemizing" your deductions, which means you have to list all of them, or taking the "standard" deduction, which is around $15k for a single person and around $30k for a married couple. Around 90% of people take the standard deduction.
Tax prep software exists for people with more complicated tax situations and people who are unwilling to add and subtract a couple of numbers. The 1040 form is not complicated and anyone can use it to file their taxes for free.
The tax system in the US is complicated, you've got different state taxes as well as the federal, for example if your kids go to a different state for school than you live, add that your partner might work in another state, maybe they have different relief taxes for disasters through the year. It might very well be a feature but it is complicated, and the more activities you have, maybe investments, a small business, multiple jobs. It becomes overwhelming for non accountants.
Even the complex cases fit into an overarching tool. Most people in the UK don't submit tax returns because they don't have any income beyond their salary. Even if you do, you then use the tool which asks you a series of questions like "do you have a student loan?" and "did you receive any dividend income?", then you have to fill in some next level detail if those are true. I'm sure there are people with weird tax arrangements that need to work outside of the wizard, but I'd wager it was less than 1 in 1000, and those people tend to have the money to pay for fancy accountants to do it for them.
You also only need to fill in a tax return if you have income (or capital gains) above a threshold. SO having some interest paid on a savings account etc or a small side business or selling an asset at a small profit above what you paid for it does not mean you have to make a tax return.
I'm not sure how it is in the US, but in Canada a huge amount of low-income benefits are directly tied to filing your taxes. Most Canadians experienced this in our college years when we got GST (our VAT) refunds due to being low-income adults.
Canada recently announced that they're going to go for automated tax filing and it turns out the biggest cost may not be implementing it, but that they'd end up having to pay out a lot more in benefits to low income people that don't file.
Basically I only do mine in about 15 minutes, most spend on verifying what I actually paid for things. Because I go over of the basic deduction so I can deduct for workspace, internet and electronic equipment. But the workspace is going away so probably won't bother after this year.
Because it is (or was it the time this article was written) against the law. The company that owned the tax preparation software lobby to Congress to pass a law requiring that the IRS not provide a free and easy way for people to submit their taxes.
Sometimes I think the most exceptional thing about the USA is exceptionalism.
Solutions to problems that are solved elsewhere are pushed back against, because "The USA is fundamentally different".
Other countries have states too. The UK even has a country with an entirely different legal system (Scots Law), but we still make our collection of income tax system simple.
A "complicated tax system" (if that is the root cause) is not something that is impossible to change. It is within the gift of the government(s) to change that.
The lack of appetite for change is the result of decades of lobbying for the status quo to continue.
A 1040 form, while intimidating looking, is trivial to fill out. Once you've done it a couple times, it takes about 5 minutes.
The only arcane bit is the law. The tax prep software knows which forms to use for which financial detail.
If the law were written clearly, there would be no need at all for any special software, you could fill out a couple csv files and send an email...
Even without the law, you are right, the actual flow of the tax prep software, for most people, is something a 16 year old could probably cobble together in an afternoon or two... however the problem then becomes how to provide a public service at low cost (to cover hosting/bandwidth costs) while govt funds are explicitly forbade to be used.
To me the solution is obvious - a third party non govt player that receives specific allotment of funding, no questions asked. However, see the rampant issues with lobbyists mentioned in the article...
It's become worse since 2017 when they changed the 1040 to make it "shorter." All they did was move everything to different forms so now it's an insane process of shuffling numbers back and forth across many forms.
"tax prep" isn't something I've had to ever think about for the UK system. I don't have to buy software, I don't have to pay anyone. I get my wage, it has my taxes taken out. That's it. I don't need to keep receipts, I don't need to work out how much mortgage interest I've paid, etc.
My individual situation is calculated, by the tax authority and rolled into a "Tax code" which acts as the personal allowance. This then feeds into payroll which pay you net of tax.
If at the end of the year, the tax authority (not you, this is automatic without a form being filled in) spots an over or under payment, they adjust your tax code for the next year to recoup or refund the difference. No cheques in the post, no forms to fill in. Just automatically happening in the background.
Meanwhile for the US, I need to fill in 2555, 1040, and other forms. These aren't "5 minutes", they're slow, and more importantly error-prone, as they get you to add up different numbers rather than just asking for the information needed.
No human should ever have to answer the series of questions ( this is legit, from the current 1040 ) :
24 Add lines 22 and 23. This is your total tax
Where Line 22 is:
22 Subtract line 21 from line 18. If zero or less, enter -0-
Line 21 is of course:
21 Add lines 19 and 20
And 18 is:
18 Add lines 16 and 17
Where 17 is:
17 Amount from Schedule 2, line 3
Where that is an entirely different form.
The only purpose I can tell for this ridiculousness is to give scope for people to make mistakes.
A form should collect raw information, not put the burden of calculation shouldn't be on the form-filler in a world where computers exist.
The data is already on the form. What purpose can that solve except opening up a possibility for someone to accidentally commit tax fraud?
You're missing the point suggesting it should be "a couple of CSV files". No, it shouldn't be any filing at all.
Demand change, demand simplification of the tax system, and demand zero-filing solutions for regular employees.
> Meanwhile for the US, I need to fill in 2555, 1040, and other forms. These aren't "5 minutes", they're slow, and more importantly error-prone, as they get you to add up different numbers rather than just asking for the information needed.
For the many forms, yes of course it takes longer. However, from the W2 to the form, if you are familiar with both, it is many steps to be sure, but the process itself doesn't take long.
I don't mean to hold up the 1040 as some shining example of how to write a form.
Merely, the steps look involved, but usually boil down to several of the same number in multiple boxes, and a couple additions/subtractions. If you do it purely by hand, there is a high chance for clerical error, yes, with automation as simple as a calculator, it's much simpler.
You usually get the 1040 as part of the "preview" of the tax prep software. When you compare the actual steps involved in the 1040 vs the overly long, overcomplicated process in the tax software, it's obvious that there is a large amount of fluff involved.
Sure, there are some credits it might remember that you might not, but that's about the only reason I would think tax prep software is better here... however this could be accomplished by something as simple as a checklist provided by the govt...and if you are paranoid you could employ a lawyer to double check that every option has been explored (how do you know the tax prep software know every credit from this current year? You don't, so, what exactly are you paying for?)
We got pre-calculated returns as an alternative in the early 90's, by the time I got my first real job in the early 00's everyone used the pre-calculated one and just made changes as necessary. The first years I got my tax return in the mail and I think a few years I had to mail back a signed copy, but these days everything is digital and if you don't have to make any changes you don't have to do anything at all.
Back then you also had to physically deliver your tax deduction card to your employer so they could deduct tax correctly, but these days that is also digital and salary systems just fetches the current deduction card before running salary jobs every month.
I know French people who live near the Swiss border and who file their tax returns in a matter of minutes because all the information is pre-filled via their employer's income statement and their bank.
They are two different countries, and Switzerland is not a member of the EU.
When French bureaucracy is simpler and more efficient than your tax collection system, you have a problem.
If you want to understand the first, take McDonalds - you probably have one and don't think it's that bad? Imagine everything on the menu is either 10 times sweeter (sickening), or made with wilted products on the cusp of expiration, and that's "standard" food.
It's so bad, many Americans hate anything "healthy" because any time they are exposed to it, it's not much better than pigs swill. So there are many who will only eat meat, because that is harder to make taste poorly, despite being even more disease riddled (there are almost no standards for meat inspection).
So then, you are constantly sick, low energy.
And then education - suffice it to say there are many communities where it is seen as "reasonable" to believe in nonsense like "flat earth", and many struggle with basic things like addition. It's a wonder we aren't illiterate too... I suppose it's too useful to be able to read about products to buy them, so we can at least all read the adverts...(for now)
They do provide the forms, you simply fill them out. I did that every year without consulting any specialist or extra services. Much easier than in Europe. It was a 20min affair.
They were rolling out a free service over the past few years that was getting solid reviews and plenty of people used[0][1]. One of the top priorities[2] of the Trump administration and DOGE was to prevent that and it has been since shut down[3] and partly open sourced[4].
> I never understood why the Revenue can't provide a set of simple online forms for tax returns like India does.
Did you read the article? The TL;DR summary is that the US government has proposed doing this in the past, but has been lobbied against it by companies that seek to profit from software to help prepare tax returns.
