Interest income from your bank account comes on a 1099 and it takes 30 seconds to add onto your 1040. I do it every year.
Again, you seem to simultaneously believe that nearly everyone has trivial taxes to file while believing that the government cannot reasonably support free direct filing for these people. I have to wonder how you reconcile these beliefs in your head. “I mean, this is so simple. Any moron can do it. But not the agency specifically responsible for handling trillions in tax revenue. Nah, too complex for them.”
> These aren’t wealthy people filing with CPAs. These are lower income folks who specifically benefited from the IRS direct file program.
Lower income people were not using IRS direct file. That’s would be the economically rational thing to do, but this is exactly the market the strip mall CPA target. They also offer advances. I have tried and tried and tried to get lower income people to use free or direct file. Virtually none are interested. They have “their guy” who is getting them a great refund.
The web page has all this information, you say OK and you are done. There is not a single "figuring out" you need to do.
This is, of course, the case for 95% of the population. You can be in the 5% where your tax filing becomes very complicated. In that case, though, you give this to a CPA and the cost of this service is zero compared to the amount of euros you deal with.
In other countries there are such things as national citizen registries with domicile and familial information, this doesn’t exist in the US. If it did you could use that information to get much more of a start.
I did not state otherwise. The point is that you are misstating the complexity of the typical tax return. It is not in fact “enter your W-2, take the standard deduction, and done” for most people, even for those with relatively straightforward taxes.
> Lower income people were not using IRS direct file.
I don’t think the IRS has released this data. I do know that direct file was specifically limited to simple cases though.
