"The minimal cost of some trivial paperwork" - the US tax filing system is a joke and the paperwork is anything but trivial. Especially given the potential consequences of getting it wrong.
> When you make an error the IRS helps you. They compute your taxes anyway and they send you a letter with your error and the updated number.
You make this sound so simple. And yet, speaking from experience, it drags out for months and ends up costing 5-figures in penalties. If they can so easily compute the correct number anyway why continue with the whole charade of making us answer a whole bunch of barely decipherable questions?
> If they can so easily compute the correct number anyway why continue with the whole charade of making us answer a whole bunch of barely decipherable questions?
You should look up what Intuit and H&R Block lobby for. They spend massive amounts of money to stop the IRS from just sending you a prefilled out form for you to verify. It's called return-free filling. There have been countless bills to introduce this but they always die. The IRS could technically do it easily, but it isn't authorized to by Congress.
This is one of those stories that breaks every year or two in major newspapers and people are outraged but it never gets better.
> When you make an error the IRS helps you. They compute your taxes anyway and they send you a letter with your error and the updated number.
You make this sound so simple. And yet, speaking from experience, it drags out for months and ends up costing 5-figures in penalties. If they can so easily compute the correct number anyway why continue with the whole charade of making us answer a whole bunch of barely decipherable questions?