TurboTax plus Republicans wanting to make paying taxes as difficult as possible so people will vote to cut taxes

The IRS is actually going test pilot such a program in a few states in the near future.

America moment

Also, the IRS only escalates straight to jail if it's incredibly obvious you're intentionally committing tax fraud. If your forms are wrong they just send you a letter to fix it.

Link? I will instantly use it. Mostly to stick it to Intuit.

Why that isn't the default to begin with is anyone's guess

It's already like this with free tax returns. It just sucks you have to go through Intuit, because of their lobbying. The government is also counting on you to not properly doing your taxes. They want you to be lazy and pay more in taxes, for the convenience.

They don't want to come after people who aren't paying their taxes. They're making it inconvenient to file, so poor people who don't have time/ knowledge overpay.

Not in the Netherlands, there it's all calculated for you and you just do the checking. If you have a more complicated situation like self employment or other stuff you may want to hire an accountant that will not only double check but also make sure you get the best outcome by doing some strange wizardry but for most people it's literally just go online, check the salary numbers etc, click okay and get some cash back to your account.

It's because our country is a corporate oligarchy.

Americans as a whole are very stupid and don't realize that the overwhelming majority of them can file for free. In fact, 100% of Americans can self-file (for free) if they can handle about an hour of basic paperwork, but for 70% of Americans, you can file taxes for free in less than twenty minutes. It's not hard at all.

But most people would rather Google "how to file taxes," click on the first sponsored link they see, and buy something before they ever actually try to do even a minute of research.

Because Congress creates really, really complicated tax laws that reduce tax burdens for business losses and obviously favor a structure that if you're wealthy enough you can exploit it for things that aren't actually contributing to our economy. Regular person with a few deductions that might go over a standard deduction? You might want some help with that, even if you're "doing it yourself" with the help of software (just like almost all of tax preparers do) or if you're just doing a standard deduction, it is easy.

Why can't you just fill out a 1040EZ in a webform and file online through the IRS?

Companies like Intuit lobby Congress so that the IRS can't just make it easy for most people. For example, the IRS wanted to just have their own app on a website to help you do your taxes for free just like TurboTax but nope.

As an example, you can specifically blame Intuit as an example that has actively tried to limit the IRS making tax filing free and easy for most Americans.

The same thing has happened with weather in the US. NOAA/NWS pretty much provides all weather data and RADAR data to the public for free. They also provide a public API and all those weather apps either directly or indirectly get their data from there for the US.

Why don't they have an app like all these weather services do? Well companies lobbied so NWS isn't allowed to. The best they can do is provide a website that you can "use like an app." Paying extra for that up-to-date RADAR feed in your weather app? Guess what? You already did through taxes and now you get to pay a private company to simply display it in their interface.

You can specifically blame AccuWeather as an example of a company that actively has tried to limit the NWS and actually lock the public out of the data that they paid for through taxes.

Congress has the power to end this non-sense but does not. I'm sure this won't surprise anyone when I say this but US law is slanted towards empowering businesses and lowering accountability.

FreeTaxUSA provides free federal filing, including Schedule C (Self-Employeed) and Schedule E (Rental Income). I'm sure they have more scenarios.

You pay for state but it's usually a $12-15.

You can import your TurboTax/HR Block returns and it mostly does a good job bringing it in.

That's still dumb AF, they could easily do like many other countries do and send you a breakdown of what you owe/getting back and why. You look it over and go "looks good to me" and have to do nothing or "This part is wrong" or "I qualify for Y tax break/incentive/credit" and then file some proof and you're done.

But the tax prep companies lobby really hard to keep things as difficult as they are

Your employer is required to submit the amount you were paid and the taxes that were withheld. The IRS knows how much you owe assuming that is your one source of income and you don't have deductions beyond the standard.

That's only true if you're getting paid cash under the table, make tips, or are self-employed. Your job reports your earnings to the IRS.

in the u.s you don’t have to file if your income is under a certain threshold

You don't have to but also if you're under that threshold you would almost certainly be getting a refund of all of the taxes you paid that year. So I highly recommend filing even if you don't need to