When you go buy a sandwich , you get plenty of human interaction so that they deliver what you want . Now when it comes to taxes, you are spending tens of thousands of dollars and there is no human contact at all? Why can not the IRS make it mandatory that they review all your tax returns before submission? It just strikes me as odd, that you spend all that money with ZERO customer service. I don't think simplifying taxes is the solution since they will always be complex to the average joe. I have a masters degree in engineering and find most of it above my head.
I'm surprised. Given that you have a masters in engineering, I would think you would be happier dealing with the IRS computers rather than the IRS humans. I know I am, but I only have a BS in engineering.
Well, there are a number of reasons for this and at least one solution for you. Among the reasons for not involving the IRS directly is
A presumption that you will do things correctly. And that you don't need help.
A desire to have the returns in by a particular common deadline for everyone (simplifies things, but bunches everything into a short time period).
The fact that the IRS doesn't get the money you are paying. It is the government itself. So, any additional service of the type that you desire would have to be financed by an additional user fee. The IRS is just trying to efficiently collect the money that is owed. An imperfect analogy might be that the payment processing center that you send your home-owners insurance check to doesn't engage in any customer service. They just take your policy number and check and handle that part of the transaction. It is up to you to decide what sort of coverage you want or need.
And the SOLUTION. Actually a couple of them, but #1 is closest to what you want.
There are any number of highly qualified and friendly professionals that will be willing to give you the kind of customer service you desire. Some of them even post regularly to this forum. And the benefit is that you get to choose your own personal "customer service representative", rather than leaving it up to the government to choose one for you.
Also, can't you have the IRS calculate your taxes for you? Isn't there still a check box for having them do the computation, at least for an uncomplicated return?
You can take steps to simplify your financial life. Work for wages. Invest only in bank savings accounts, CDs. Don't itemize deductions. Then you don't have to worry at all about any of the complicated stuff.
Not only will the IRS calculate your tax, they will give you up to an extra 30 days to pay your tax bill without interest.
From IRS Pub 967:
"You can have the IRS figure your tax on Form 1040EZ, Form 1040A, or Form 1040 if you file your return by April 15, 2009. If you paid too much, we will send you a refund. If you did not pay enough, we will send you a bill for the balance. To avoid interest or the penalty for late payment, you must pay the bill within 30 days of the date of the bill or by the due date for your return, whichever is later. The IRS will also figure the credit for the elderly or the disabled, the earned income credit, and the recovery rebate credit."
There are some eligibility rules, such as you can't itemize and you can't be using certain forms or schedules, but other than that, this is a great deal. See IRS Pub 967 for detail instructions on how to complete your tax return. There is no check box on the tax return.
Right. You are not a customer of the IRS, so why would you expect customer service? Write your Congressperson if you don't like it.
Note that under this option, you still pretty much have to complete your tax return yourself, but the IRS will "calculate your tax" (look up your tax in the tax tables). Not really the same thing. For example, even if you are not itemizing for the current year, but you got a state tax refund (Form 1099-G), they won't be able to help you.
The OP alluded to "tens of thousands of dollars" of tax liability, which makes it highly unlikely he will pass the "taxable income under $100K" test for this option.
Right. You are not a customer of the IRS, so why would you expect customer service? Write your Congressperson if you don't like it.
Note that under this option, you still pretty much have to complete your tax return yourself, but the IRS will "calculate your tax" (look up your tax in the tax tables). Not really the same thing. For example, even if you are not itemizing for the current year, but you got a state tax refund (Form 1099-G), they won't be able to help you.
The OP alluded to "tens of thousands of dollars" of tax liability, which makes it highly unlikely he will pass the "taxable income under $100K" test for this option.
The IRS has moved away from an actual person at a regional office contacting you about your return. My cursory reaction is that I liked the old system better; however, I understand why they have changed. Even though IRS employees receive extensive training and are adequately paid, they are wrong almost half the time. Therefore, if a taxpayer's return is in the hands of an incompetent IRS employee, on their own they are unlikely to surmount this obstacle and will probably give up.
The IRS, like many companies, is focused on getting their software to do the work, not the employees. The likelihood of them using a system where they provide you with the name and contact information for a real person is zilch. I just wish they wouldn't let the computers generate more letters than they have employees available to handle the responses.
I suspect the real (and probably justified) reason is that there is a perhaps small but still significant fraction of the population who are either simply unable or simply unwilling to deal in a productive or effective way with an agency like the IRS in a face to face encounter concernng a technical matter like taxes; and the IRS may not want to have to either invest the very large amount of wasted time that can be incurred in such encounters, or incur the wrath if they simply "close the window" on such an individual.
The tax code is thousands of pages long, nobody can be expected to understand all of it, not even the IRS.
Sounds like a problem of nobody wanting to assume the responsibility. Each government agency just wants to keep doing what they are doing, regardless if it is wrong in the greater scheme of things. It's one of the reasons for the recent wall street collapse, so seems like we may be overdue for an IRS collapse...
My post is not about me, but about the IRS in general. The IRS does not mandate people use professional tax preparers, so why would someone? No human beings are trained to pay someone to calculate how much money they have to pay someone else. That just violates basic human nature.
The IRS does not even review all tax return numbers after submission. I think I read recently in an article in the NY Times that the audit frequency is now around 1%. Granted certain items on a return may raise a red flag and increase the chances of an audit by a lot.
If your income is low enough and other criteria are met, you can find a VITA (google on this) office where a live person, trained by the IRS, will do your taxes.
There is also live IRS phone help and IRS offices where a person can walk in, especially for assistance with a problem.
So it is not true that there is no human interaction at all. It is far from a perfect system but given the constraints (which others point) of the problem, only small improvements can be made each year. Write your members of Congress to promote more improvements.
There is no need to understand all of it. There are relatively few pages that actually relate to the average Joe's situation over their entire lifetime. Now, that's not to imply that it's an easy read. War and Peace as related by Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus would be easier to understand. But, you don't need a current copy of a Chilton's manual for your make of vehicle to know how to drive it. In fact you hardly know all the rules of the road and various traffic laws, yet you do fine on the roads
99.99% of the time. Same for those thousands of pages of tax code. You don't need to know most of it to prepare a complete and proper tax return.
They can't, and I hope they never do. Besides, Congress would have to mandate that.
For the same reason someone uses an oil change place instead of doing it themselves.
Less messy. Quicker.
Look, Title 26 consists of 11 Subtitles (A-K) of which most people have to deal with Subtitle A, which has 6 Chapters (2 have been repealed). Throw out the one on consolidated returns and withholding on non-residents and alien corporations, and that leaves Normal taxes and Surtaxes, and Self-Employment Tax (2 Chapters) that might apply to most people at some point in their life.
Of Chapter 1-Normal Taxes and Surtaxes, the following Subchapters might apply at some point in someone's life for tax purposes: Subchapter A-Determination of Tax Liability Subchapter B-Computation of Taxable Income Subchapter O-Gain or Loss on Disposition of Property Subchapter P-Capital Gains and Losses
The remainder barely apply to most businesses, entities or other institutions. The point is that if you are to get into the banking or insurance business organized as a partnership or "S" corporation, you might need to find out more about the tax and legal implications of doing so, before doing so. Otherwise, just skip over those couple of thousand pages.
Take Subchapter B from Chapter 1. There are 11 Parts, of which most people can shave off a few that just don't relate, like Part IV-Tax Exemption Requirement for State and Local Bonds, Part VIII-Special Deductions for Corporations, Part X-Terminal Railroad Corporations and their Shareholders, Part XI-Special Rules Relating to Corporate Preference Items.
Within the Parts that might apply, there are sections that may not, like §
280E. Expenditures in connection with the illegal sale of drugs. The income from the sale of illegal drugs would be taxable income, but the expenses of that illegal drug business are not deductible. Of course, you don't need to ever know that to prepare your return properly.
How many pages of tax code actually impact any given individual's return will vary with the complexity, but it's a shy number compared to the tens of thousands of pages of actual tax code that exist and apply to businesses, governments and other entities and activities.
That's not what I get when I re-read your OP. It sounds like you are saying, "I pay a lot of taxes relative to most, so I should get VIP treatment from the IRS regarding my return preparation and acceptance".
Appraisers? Divorce attorneys?
If you pay someone to calculate what you owe, you should get some guarantees from that person regarding a calculation that is too high or too low.
OK. So you have an IRS that doesn't understand the tax code either, and you want THEM to review your taxes and help you personally? That sounds a bit crazy to me. I would think that you would want someone who you thought actually understood things help you.
And the sheer size of the tax code is only really relevant if it ALL applied to you. I would venture to suggest that the vast majority of the provisions don't apply to most taxpayers. I expect that even for really complicated tax returns, only a small fraction of the total code is applicable. So you really only need to understand enough to handle your tax situation. And you do have a choice is making at least parts of this a lot simpler -- although the various phase-outs do make it more difficult to avoid some of the hassles, at least if you do your taxes entirely by hand.
I'm not sure how this reply responds to the original.
In any case, I guess I don't quite understand exactly what sort of personal "customer service" you would like to receive from the IRS.
Are you requesting that they audit your return every year before accepting it? Do you want someone from the IRS to come to your home and ask questions about your income, examine your financial records, etc. and then help you prepare a return?
Do you just want the quality of advice provided by phone to improve? (I could go for that one).
And how much would you be willing to pay for this service? After all it would have to be paid for by someone, either through a direct charge, higher taxes in general, or a reduction of some other federal expenditure that we've (collectively) decided that we would really like to have. It would be a bit of a hard sell to argue that the vast majority of taxpayers who have simple returns should have to pay extra to support the few with really complicated financial dealings. Presumably those with such complicated finances are doing well enough that they should be able to pay their own way.
The IRS doesn't forbid you to use professionals either. Just like the building and safety department didn't require me to use a contractor to work on my kitchen. I could have done all the work myself, subject to their inspection. It's just that, in that case, I felt it was a bigger job than I could handle alone. So I chose to hire a general contractor to do the work.
So the IRS (or more properly Congress -- who actually sets the rules) takes the viewpoint that rational adults will be able to decide on their own if they are up to the task of filling out the required tax returns. For most people, this is fairly simple. If it isn't, then there are resources available in the private sector to provide assistance.
Lots of things in modern society violate human nature and require training. Most jobs are that way. So is driving a car. It's highly unnatural. So is using a cell phone. Part of the price of living in a modern industrial society is learning how to operate within the rules of that society. The US requires you to file tax returns. It's not clear what better alternative there might be.
It sounds like you would prefer that the IRS just send you a bill every March 15th, which was due within 30 days. Would that be preferable? Is that what you would like better?
Of course there is always the extreme case of reducing your income to the point where you are no longer required to file a return. Now that's simplification! But I'll pass on that one. I have a few banks that I need to support....
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