<story><title>Call on the IRS to provide libre tax-filing software</title><url>https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/call-on-the-irs-to-provide-libre-tax-filing-software</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jedberg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a good thought, but the wrong solution.&lt;p&gt;The US should do what other civilized countries do and send you a tax bill.  They can give you a simple form to tell them a few things that a lot of people have (donations, change in marital status, new dependent, other income like rent, etc) and then you can either pay the bill or file the regular return because your situation is complicated.&lt;p&gt;90% of taxpayers only have income the government already knows about, and with some simple data about donations and dependents, most people&amp;#x27;s tax bills can be calculated and billed.&lt;p&gt;The only people who would need to prep forms would have such complicated situations that they need a professional.</text></comment>
<story><title>Call on the IRS to provide libre tax-filing software</title><url>https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/call-on-the-irs-to-provide-libre-tax-filing-software</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dahwolf</author><text>Taxes in the Netherlands: go to website, log in with digital ID. Next, next, next, next, finish. Done. Less than 5 minutes. Income, savings accounts, mortgage, all prefilled.&lt;p&gt;For businesses, complicated households, people dealing with particular life events (divorce, inheritance, special medical deductions) it&amp;#x27;s a bit more work but still doable.&lt;p&gt;Our government is strongly incentivized to make taxes easy and even came up with a slogan: &amp;quot;taxes. we can&amp;#x27;t make them more fun, but we sure can make them easier&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s clear why they want to make it easy: it takes an army of very expensive staff to address endless questions. And then some even more expensive staff to address tax appeals.</text></comment>