“In fact only 47% of U.S. residents pay any income tax. ”
I liked the idea of FairTax, but actually your fact is not one. The most recent estimate is 45% of filers owed nothing to the government, not 47% of US Residents pay income tax. Unless you’re talking about illegal aliens or people who only do under-the-table jobs, in which case your “fact” is at best a (possibly) educated guess

“Trent your continued enthusiasm for big government and your touching faith that government can do anything right continues to amaze me.”

I thought he was rather careful with his tone here…

All other items are already available.

go to IRS’ free fillable forms dot org.
(no fees, you can efile, e-refunds, no income limits, automatic math, self-consistency checks across multiple forms, it will automatically load Schedule D if you have Cap Gains, Schedule A if you want to Itemize, 1099DIV if you have dividends, 1099B if you sold stocks, … pretty much any form you want).

I used it this year with great results and no hassles.

(Ofcourse, if <58K AGI, private companies also allow you to file free federal returns)

Freefillableforms is as good as Turbo Tax or other private tax prep software. Only advantage of other tax prep software is that they dumb down the questions, e.g. "9a. Qualified dividends" to "Did you receive any dividends from any stocks you owned?", "Were they qualified dividends?", etc.

It could be argued that your complicated tax situation *is* your fault, since you chose to work as an independent contractor.

Look, I’m not saying the system can’t be improved (it can, and absolutely SHOULD). But I don’t think the interim solution is to offer government-sponsored tax software.

Think about it this way: who do you think is going to pay for that system the IRS creates? Taxpayers. So, the wealthy will already be subsidizing the poor for the software, it would just be in a more convoluted manner. Next, who is more efficient: the government or competing businesses? Assuming we agree that competitive businesses are (typically) more efficient, then we would be taking the software away from people that compete with one another for your business and putting it in the hands of the IRS. Have you ever tried to work with the IRS? Do you find them particularly customer-service oriented?

So, you would then have to pay for the same system to be less efficient and less customer-friendly. What do we gain my that change? If we implemented such a system we would all be back here a year from now complaining about how difficult the new IRS online system is to navigate and use. Believe me, it will not be Turbo Tax.

How about we focus our angst and resources to the actual root of the problem: a tax system in desperate need of an overhaul.

I would encourage everyone to ‘google’ Fair Tax. not to be confused with flat tax. For 5-6 years there has been proposed bills in both the House and Senate to implement the Fair Tax so the illegals, drug pushers and prostitutes, etc would also pay taxes on new merchandise they purchase. Now none of them do. In fact only 47% of U.S. residents pay any income tax. Bad scene!

Bear in mind that th Fair Tax would not hurt or impacrt the poor as is so often said. It would only impact the tax preparing professionals and the 2 million IRS employees. “paying them welfare would save us millions alone”. They need to get a real job.

Since the bills proposed have been in Washington D.C. the lobbyist have lined the pockets of the politations to NOT bring these to the floor.

Last election I personally voted against every incumbent at all government levels. Two terms in office for all of them and then they are in the lobbist and special interest pocket.

The system is broke and Super Glue quick fixes don’t seem to work.

At home, both were easy. Employed: I gave my employer a code that indicates if it’s my primary or a secondary source of income, and whether I have a student loan (payments are deducted automatically). I was sent a summary by IRD (equivalent of IRS) each year to check. Self-employed: I looked at my bank account, spent about 10 minutes filling in the form and done. I had the option to do it online but chose not to.

Here, being employed is basically the same, except without the tax code and the summary comes from each employer. I guess if you had multiple employers it would be more of a problem. Now I’m self-employed, I do have an accountant to do it for me – partially because a language barrier makes it more complicated. My boyfriend’s dad (a slightly nutty maths professor) does his each year and is fined each year due to errors.

There is a bracket system at home (I imagine similar to US, just with different numbers) and here there’s a flat rate. The flat rate doesn’t necessarily make filing easier! And guess what? The flat rate is in a former communist country…