PSA text from celli

[conuly]

The IRS invites the public to participate in an anonymous feedback survey on tax preparation and filing options, which will run through Sept. 5, 2025.

The survey is being conducted as part of the Department of Treasury and the IRS’s efforts to fulfill a reporting requirement to Congress under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. The law directs Treasury to deliver a report to Congress by Oct. 2, 2025, on several key issues related to free tax filing options for the public.

Treasury and the IRS encourage taxpayers to share their perspectives and help inform this important congressional report.

Translation: We have to report to Congress about the public's interest in Free File (filing directly on the IRS website) because they want to quash it, so here's a survey!

survey here

There are a couple of leading questions that I personally found HIGHLY entertaining. But I do recommend that if you are an American taxpayer you take a look at it/take it.

There was one question that asked what's important in filing taxes, and it had an "other" option that opened a handy text window, so I used that text window to tell them all about how filing taxes is a waste of time and money when the IRS already has all that information. There is absolutely no reason they can't just send you a bill or a refund every year, with a receipt, and you'd only have to file if you had to correct errors or had income or deductions that had been unreported for whatever reason.

Comments

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I would bet there are two reasons:

1) control, showing they can force others to do the work

and

2) so they can fob off the expense on the taxpayers, rather than have to pay staff to process the data.

Re: Well ...

[conuly]

I'm pretty sure that there is one reason, which is that lawmakers are getting kickbacks from turbotax.

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Credible currently, but I'd look back to the origin to see what was going on then.

Re: Well ...

[hudebnik]

I don't think there's a specific "origin": the US tax-preparation industry has been growing gradually, along with the complexity of tax forms, for a hundred years.

I'm pretty sure TurboTax et al started doing people's individual returns by computer before the IRS started accepting e-file. E-file unavoidably requires generating files in a format the IRS can read, so it depended on somebody providing software that does that. The companies already generating tax returns by computer would have had an enormous head-start, so it wouldn't have been hard for them to convince the IRS "Don't worry about providing e-file software; we've got this, you stick to doing what you do best." Which really does make some sense, but it also means they get a state-enforced monopoly, aw shucks.

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I meant look at where someone decided that, instead of the institution using information it already had, they fobbed off the work on individual taxpayers instead. Everything else stems from that distribution of labor.

Re: Well ...

[hudebnik]

Ah, that's a different "origin" than I was thinking of.

But still, when income tax was introduced, over 100 years ago, the IRS didn't already have that information, because there was no expectation that employers report everything they paid to individuals to the government. I don't know when employer-reporting became mandatory, but if the "distribution of labor" was already in place by then, I could see it just staying through inertia.

Re: Well ...

[rebeccmeister]

This is my understanding also of how we got where we are today. Tax preparers lobbied so effectively. Horrible and evil.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention; I'll try and get the survey filled out.

Re: Well ...

[cellio]

Tax-prep companies also lobby against simplifying the tax code. Gotta keep it complicated enough that people need software!

[sonia]

Thanks for the link! Filled it out, and included a note similar to yours.

[sonia]

But I couldn't get the little dreamwidth symbols in title. How did you do that? I tried @ and [personal profile] and neither one worked.

[magid]

The html is user name=“” (in html brackets).

Dreamwidth-specific html info is at https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=82.

[sonia]

Thanks!

[magid]

Having the IRS do the calculations like this was one of Elizabeth Warren’s proposals….

[conuly]

In some other, better world, she's president right now.

[adafrog]

Of course y first thought is that they're up to something nefarious.

[conuly]

Well, yeah. They want to nefariously shut down the free efile program.

[shadowkat]

Done.

[silveradept]

Similarly entered a comment about the government providing me with a form to review, since they already have the necessary information.

Regarding a later question, if the government is concerned there will be cost to them to provide a useful service, they can get rid of a useless one, like supplying weapons to other governments to use in genocidal ways.

[conuly]

Oh, yeah, good luck with defunding the military industrial complex.