Interesting article but it sounds like all the author had to do was schedule an appointment and wait 30min.
Also the conclusion is discouraging: rather than make self payment easier, the IRS easily has the information available to estimate and deduct taxes as they are due automatically or via an easy online form. Turbotax and other providers lobby against this for good reason, because with TurboTax you still have to input information and calculate taxes whereas with the IRS they have the data available already.
The conclusion I drew from this article is the most annoying and tedious part of this process was manually calculating taxes well in advance, which I’d be willing to bet took significantly longer than the commute to the IRS office + 30 minute wait.
Also the conclusion is discouraging: rather than make self payment easier, the IRS easily has the information available to estimate and deduct taxes as they are due automatically or via an easy online form. Turbotax and other providers lobby against this for good reason, because with TurboTax you still have to input information and calculate taxes whereas with the IRS they have the data available already.
The conclusion I drew from this article is the most annoying and tedious part of this process was manually calculating taxes well in advance, which I’d be willing to bet took significantly longer than the commute to the IRS office + 30 minute wait.