personally i'd prefer a tax system that was easy enough to understand in an hour. like, really simple, instead of a complex bag of sticks and carrots. less waste, less time, more clarity on how much productivity is partitioned off for government services.
would really render moot the "TurboTax lobbying", "government already has info", etc conversations.
NZ Tax system is like this, takes me an hour to do my company yearly returns on their website, an hour every month for the GST and 15 mins every month for the payroll and kiwisaver (pension) of two employees.
The fact they have an "other" category in the IR10 form that captures the breakdown means I don't have to worry too much about terms that mean nothing to me or my business and 90% of my earnings can just goes in that. No need for an accountant as long as you have good separation of business and personal transactions.
Doing tax is always going to be unpleasant, I don't see any downside to the government making it easier for the person filing the return.
"Fair tax" is just an attempt to lower the tax rate of higher incomes that get hit by progressive brackets. Same for "flat tax". Calculating the tax rate is easy, the real problem is always to determine what gets taxed. That's where the loopholes are.
I haven't seen any evidence on "government already has info". It might get all the info if they send a taxpayer into audit. But there's no indication it really knows without audits.
No, the government already has almost all of your information every year from the start. Every time you get a W-2, a copy is sent to the IRS. Same with the vast majority of most tax forms. That why, if you lose any of your forms (at least the ones that say something akin to "This information is being furnished to the Internal Revenue Service."), you can request them from the IRS[1].
Some investment-related returns aren't sent to the IRS but I would estimate that for 90% of people, their taxes could be accurately calculated by the information the IRS has on file.
Additionally, I guarantee that these calculations are being made by the government anyway. If you file a tax return that is mathematically incorrect, you are very likely to receive a correction letter from the IRS[2]. This isn't an audit, it's just a letter saying that your taxes were wrong and they redid them for you, with a new outcome.
The IRS has your 1099s and W-2s. For most people filing your taxes is this weird quiz where you file your taxes and the IRS checks your return against what they already know.
Yes, although it's not always ideal too. E.g. for personal business you're required to conduct all transactions through a dedicated business bank account. But it's easily avoidable by using a different account, and there are cases when you cannot use the business bank account even if you want. But taxes are computed automatically from only that bank account. To stay honest, you need to decline automatic tax calculation and file separate forms to pay more taxes, no one does that.
would really render moot the "TurboTax lobbying", "government already has info", etc conversations.