alt Hacker NewsThis is by design. Income tax filing is a long-solved problem in much of the first world.
One of the easiest ways to convince the public that the government is inept and wasteful is to make it as difficult to do the necessary as possible. If politicians cared, this wouldn’t be an issue.
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crooked-v • last Monday at 2:06 AM
Politicians do care. Unfortunately, the ones who care are the ones who want taxes to be painful and complicated, to benefit the TurboTax lobby and/or to keep people constantly viscerally aware that they're paying taxes at all.
Basically nothing is going to happen to you if you make a best effort. So many people focus on getting it correct and pay hundreds or thousands to do so. I've filed my taxes incorrectly by accident for years and the IRS just sends me a correction and the new amount