This would just paper over the fact that the US tax code is an abomination of deductions and credits. It would not simplify any of the magic math; it would just make most people think they are getting the right credits.
Would it actually give people all the deductions and credits they could get through a detailed analysis? I highly doubt it. TurboTax doesn't ask 1000 questions for fun; most of them matter because of the insanity of our tax code.
It would probably put turbo-tax out of business though, this is true. The default, free, option is going to win against a paid product.
All this will accomplish is making sure that tax preparation is back where it was two decades ago -- where the Actually Wealthy hire a person to do their taxes and get the right deductions, and everyone else gets stuck with an opaque bill which they can't afford to assess for accuracy. This is a far more regressive system than what we have now.
Don't accuse me of being a TurboTax shill. I have nothing to do with them, besides doing many hours of complex taxes which would have cost far more in-person than with TurboTax (and no, I'm not under any circumstances blindly entrusting the IRS with correctly calculating ISO AMT nonsense.)
Would it actually give people all the deductions and credits they could get through a detailed analysis? I highly doubt it. TurboTax doesn't ask 1000 questions for fun; most of them matter because of the insanity of our tax code.
It would probably put turbo-tax out of business though, this is true. The default, free, option is going to win against a paid product.
All this will accomplish is making sure that tax preparation is back where it was two decades ago -- where the Actually Wealthy hire a person to do their taxes and get the right deductions, and everyone else gets stuck with an opaque bill which they can't afford to assess for accuracy. This is a far more regressive system than what we have now.
Don't accuse me of being a TurboTax shill. I have nothing to do with them, besides doing many hours of complex taxes which would have cost far more in-person than with TurboTax (and no, I'm not under any circumstances blindly entrusting the IRS with correctly calculating ISO AMT nonsense.)