Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

I'm not even sure why. Even if the IRS prepared an "initial statement" for you given what they have more than half of the US would (still) have to hire someone to come in and fix everything. I did an IRA backdoor this year and accidentally overcontributed my 401k, my previous years state taxes also contained an error that had to be rectified; my taxes were an absolute mess.

Who tax prep should be worried about is people who want taxes to just be a bill with no exemptions or write-offs. They usually fly that flag under "simplify the tax code".

View on HN

Almost 90% of Americans use the standard deduction rather than itemizing. The vast majority of those could have their tax statements automatically prepared.

That seemed really low to me - I've itemized pretty much whenever I've had a mortgage. So I've always assumed for most people with a mortgage it would make sense.

Looking here it seems you're pretty much right - https://taxfoundation.org/standard-deduction-itemized-deduct...

That is interesting. I didn't know the "simplify taxes" people won. This is why you can't write off moving expenses, etc... No wonder taxes have been so high.

TCJA of 2017 (the big Trump-era tax bill) reduced or eliminated a lot of deductions (personal exemption, mortgage interest, SALT, and a bunch of little ones like moving expenses) in exchange for doubling the standard deduction and child tax credit.

I mean, if you live in a blue state what I said registers: taxes are higher than they used to be. It's because the standard deduction is a joke compared to our state taxes plus life events.

The SALT cap definitely increased federal taxes for some wealthier taxpayers, but the main policy motivation for eliminating it wasn't simplifying the tax code. Republicans like it because it increases the relative tax burden on residents of blue states and (some) Democrats like it because it increases the relative tax burden on the wealthy. (A lot of Democrats are trying to roll back the SALT cap.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com