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Comment by molsongolden | Hacker News Reader

One of the hurdles here is that the IRS has increasingly deputized tax preparers as their first line of enforcement via preparer penalties [1].

Another is that a free filing system with pre-populated returns shifts the information asymmetry involved in tax filing to be fully in the taxpayer's favor. Many people have an "I need to report everything because I don't know what the IRS knows" mindset. If the IRS populates a taxpayer's return with all the info they have, there's no incentive to report anything not listed.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/payments/tax-preparer-penalties

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You know you can log in and see what the IRS knows, right? They make that available to you in their portal. They post it after the tax deadline though, but you can go back and see what they knew about you in previous years (the forms they got, not what you filed).

Yeah! Most info is available via transcript requests[1] but I don't believe most taxpayers know about this or bother checking what's in there.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript

I've been waiting since 2016 for my transcript request..

You can know it for the current year, too, file for an extension and way overpay estimated tax (you can't be penalized if you overpaid).

Wait until after file date but before extension date, and request all the transcripts.

Yep that's exactly what my accountant does. We file an extension with a big payment and then wait for the transcripts. The only thing I have to give him is business expenses, donations, and few other deductions that aren't in the transcripts.

This is the true life hack, heh. I learned something new today.

This is the real way to file taxes if you have a complicated return. I just learned about it last year - I usually have gotten huge refunds (employer withholding doesn't account for side business expenses), so I filed early and had to deal with the consequences.

> there's no incentive to report anything not listed.

Maybe. That also implies that the entire population wants to cheat the government. I don't think that is necessarily true.

I find it difficult to believe that most of Europe would continue to use their pre-filled tax forms if claims that it incentivized under-reporting were even remotely true.

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