16% of the US, or roughly 30M people, also own businesses which take advantage of an evolving and incentivized tax code. That's why I said making it more simple doesn't solve the problems people think it does. An e-file system with the appropriate questions asked could leave our tax system in place and eliminate tax processing fees.
Some people have very simple taxes, no doubt, but I wouldn't design a system as important as tax collection that would purposefully over charge a large portion of the population.
Yep, 84% is a pretty big majority, is it not? You aren't really disagreeing with me. The general proposal is that you'd get a "tax bill" that would typically be for $0 for people thanks to automatic payroll deductions, and can be safely ignored if you file your taxes. Businesses would file taxes, the vast majority of people would not.
If your concern is that business owners blindly pay bills without reading bold text that says something along the lines of "if you have additional deductions to report, file your taxes, find more information at https://..." then those business owners weren't going to last a year anyway.
>$0 for people thanks to automatic payroll deductions
Only perhaps if you have a single job and no other income. How would one employer know what you (or your spouse) earned at other jobs during the year? They can't deduct the correct amount without knowing your full year result, which is obviously impossible to implement with pay period withholding.
I probably conflated OPs argument that the IRS already knows everything they need to know about you, which is not true. Someone else posted the stat on this thread that roughly 40% of Americans could benefit from what the IRS already knows. 60% would not.
Looks like 84% are left unless you want to peel off a few more.
> I wouldn't design a system as important as tax collection that would purposefully over charge a large portion of the population.
Nobody is asking you to. I would absolutely do work for 100% of people that only 84% would be able to fully use. Imagine not building roads because only 84% of people drive.
Some people have very simple taxes, no doubt, but I wouldn't design a system as important as tax collection that would purposefully over charge a large portion of the population.