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Comment by pratheekrebala | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this would prevent you from using a CPA or Itemizing your return. However, this system could be very beneficial for the 68.5% of the population that doesn't itemize[1].

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/who-itemizes-deductions/

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I think it would still happen with standard/non-itemized deductions. This particular case was mis-reported income. But agreed that my case (and really any cases that involve capital-gains) are probably in the vast minority.

Lots of people receive RSU's, and the cost basis issue is extremely common.

I never itemized and I’m pretty sure the IRS could never do my tax forms while I was in China...heck, they never even asked for anything like a W2 since my income was all foreign.

I fail to see how this is an argument against making this an option, though.

Itemizing isn’t the only thing that makes taxes too difficult to do automatically.

Yes, but this isn't for the outliers who know they are outliers.

This is for the people who right now are paying some company to essentially and unnecessarily siphon off some of their tax money.

I get it, but anyone making more than $100k probably has investments Schedule Ds and all that other crap to worry about. And anyone else can file a 1040EZ anyways. Not ideal for sure, but the hard case remains the hard case.

Itemizing deductions is totally different from reporting cost basis on a stock sale.

Right, I was just pointing out that OPs case is in the minority of tax filers and that making this option available would benefit a lot of tax-filers and wouldn't prevent OP from filing their taxes as they normally would.

I'm not sure people with RSU's are as small of a minority as you think. They're a fairly common form of compensation.

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