How to Fix America’s Cruel and Unusual Tax Code
A simpler system would be vastly easier for the IRS to administer and for taxpayers to understand and endure.
How long have you got?
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images
It probably escaped your attention, but the Internal Revenue Service recently piloted a program to help Americans cope with their notoriously complex tax system. Direct File was meant to help taxpayers in 12 states prepare and submit their returns electronically. Some 19 million people were eligible to use it. Thanks partly to a rollout late in the tax-preparation season, fewer than 1% of them actually did.
The IRS was pleased with the results nonetheless: Taxpayers who used the system said they liked it, according to a survey, and the idea all along was to “start small, make sure it works and then build from there.” Fine. So what about next steps? “No decision has been made about the future of Direct File at this time,” the agency says.