Ryan Ellis for Forbes writes: Maybe it’s the late winter. If you’ve noticed an odd absence of a common news meme this April, you’re not alone. This is normally the time of year when breathless liberal columnists come out with articles arguing that the IRS should prepare people’s taxes for them. Just last year, there were two of them that made the rounds that you might have seen–one by Matt Yglesias of Slate and one by ProPublica. Those were hardly the only ones.
This year? Crickets. I’d like to believe that the force of arguments Americans for Tax Reform and others have been making all these years has finally penetrated through–that it’s a massive conflict of interest for the IRS to both determine and collect your tax liability, that there’s ample free options available for most filers, and that the IRS is distinctly incapable of taking on this task.
But the real answer is probably that the obvious challenges this idea faces in 2014 are too great to overlook. Here are some fresh reasons why the IRS should absolutely not be preparing your taxes for you (on top of the old ones, which are still good):
The IRS Commissioner himself thinks the agency can’t do it. On April 26, 2014, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was asked about prospects for a “return free” IRS tax preparation system. Here is what he had to say:
[Snip], the Article continues @ Forbes, click here to continue reading...“We’re not doing anything with that. It would take a long time to be able to do that. We do have work going onto figure out how to get better third party information into our system earlier, so as we actually match up tax returns for identity theft or engage in audits, we’ll have more data available in a more timely manner. Right now we don’t get the W2 forms from Social Security or the 1099 forms until late in the spring, which doesn’t do us much good as everybody is filing in January or February.”
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