This is insane to me. Not only is the US tax code so complex you need a specialist to help you fill in the tax return but those specialists apparently also have a justified expectation of income and thus can’t be replaced by a freaking web app. Let alone a pre-filled one. I spend 15-20 minutes on my tax return in Estonia and only take that long, because I have some savings in places that do not do the reporting for me. The refund appears on my bank account usually within a few days. We are not the most capable country nor have the best engineers (hello, I’m the former CIO of Estonian Tax and Customs). We don’t have mountains of money either. And yet, here is a solution (and has been for 20+ years by now), that’s two orders of magnitude better, than the solution used by the leading country of the free world. Just why?