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New plan… let the IRS do your taxes for you!
Hotair ^ | 05/04/2014 | Jazz Shaw

Posted on 05/04/2014 5:03:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

It’s a couple of weeks too late for this to help most people this year, but I’m sure many of you ran into issues filing your taxes. It’s a huge pain in the backside, isn’t it? Over at Redstate, Matthew Clark dredges up a brilliant scheme from Ezra Klein which should make all of your lives easier.

Why not let the IRS do our taxes for us?

Liberal wunderkind Ezra Klein (formerly of the Washington Post and now of Vox.com) was pushing this new idea a few weeks ago.

Well it wasn’t really new. He’s been pushing it for years.

The idea is to let the IRS, which already has your income and other tax information reported to it, prepare your taxes for you. Klein promotes that it will save billions of dollars and millions of man-hours and “make the IRS your friend.” I mean who really likes doing their own taxes?

But it’s one of the absolute worst ideas I’ve ever heard.

Well, sure… the idea is bound to have a few critics, but not everyone would oppose it apparently. I don’t know if they still do this, but back in the 80′s I dated a girl who informed me that she had never filled out a tax return. Each year she simply filled in her name, date of birth, SSN and other personal bits on a blank 1040 and stuffed it in an envelope with her W-2. She then mailed it off to the IRS and had never had any problems with it. Now, I’m not sure if this was legal and her return was processed properly or she just hadn’t ever been caught, but she claimed to have gotten refund checks in the past, so I assumed it was possible.

Should you do it? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there might be a few people who could conceivably benefit from it. Young, single folks with one source of regular income who rent (rather than owning their home) and with no major outstanding debt or savings, could possibly get away with this and not lose much in the bargain. But I also agree with Matthew in that the IRS has the least possible incentive imaginable to put in any effort to ensure you get all of the deductions, etc. possible and pay the lowest bill. I mean, even if you implicitly trusted the government to begin with, this just sounds like a recipe for losing money.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ezraklein; irs; journolist; journolista; tax; taxes; washingtonpost
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1 posted on 05/04/2014 5:03:51 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Just give the Obama Admin all the money , then they will give you want they think you deserve


2 posted on 05/04/2014 5:07:20 PM PDT by molson209 (Blank)
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To: SeekAndFind

oh yeah, that’ll work, good one.


3 posted on 05/04/2014 5:07:45 PM PDT by yldstrk ( My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: SeekAndFind

Why don’t we just send them our entire incomes,they will send back what they think we need to survive.


4 posted on 05/04/2014 5:07:50 PM PDT by Farmer Dean (stop worrying about what they want to do to you,start thinking about what you want to do to them)
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To: SeekAndFind

no competing interests there sarc


5 posted on 05/04/2014 5:08:12 PM PDT by yldstrk ( My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: SeekAndFind
Adding up the income is the easy part. The tricky part is adding up the deductions. The IRS will know how much mortgage interest you've paid because of the 1099. They could know how much state and city income tax you've paid with some changes by the local governments reporting it, just as they do with any refunds they send you. Charitable and medical deductions and the ten thousand different social engineering tax credits and deductions are what make taxes hard and those are the ones which the IRS won't know about.
6 posted on 05/04/2014 5:08:22 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (Republican amnesty supporters don't care whether their own homes are called mansions or haciendas.)
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To: SeekAndFind

This has been in the works for 10 years. They plan to use their real time access to our accounts to track income and spending.


7 posted on 05/04/2014 5:09:23 PM PDT by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: KarlInOhio

They plan to track every single penny.


8 posted on 05/04/2014 5:10:37 PM PDT by driftdiver (I could eat it raw, but why do that when I have a fire.)
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To: SeekAndFind

In the days of serfdom, the tax collector came by and did your taxes for you by grabbing some of your geese. No one ever underpaid.


9 posted on 05/04/2014 5:13:41 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: Farmer Dean

Don’t give them any ideas!

(although I’m sure the battiest of the moonbats already pine for it)


10 posted on 05/04/2014 5:16:39 PM PDT by LostInBayport (When there are more people riding in the cart than there are pulling it, the cart stops moving...)
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To: SeekAndFind

If I let the IRS do my taxes, I would probably be spending the next 5 years in prison. When I got out, I’d be going back in for letting them do it again.


11 posted on 05/04/2014 5:19:42 PM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults)
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To: SeekAndFind
why not simply goto a 10% flat tax and eliminate the IRS all together???
12 posted on 05/04/2014 5:20:18 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: LostInBayport

The welfare parasites expect the government to do something like that.`I expect the government to oblige them at some point.


13 posted on 05/04/2014 5:20:22 PM PDT by Farmer Dean (stop worrying about what they want to do to you,start thinking about what you want to do to them)
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To: SeekAndFind

Let’s go to the Fair Tax and eliminate the IRS.


14 posted on 05/04/2014 5:23:25 PM PDT by Ben Mugged (The number one enemy of liberalism is reality.)
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To: Chode

There you go Chode,trying to superimpose logic onto the IRS and liberals.


15 posted on 05/04/2014 5:24:03 PM PDT by Farmer Dean (stop worrying about what they want to do to you,start thinking about what you want to do to them)
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To: Chode

If we put an end to the automatic increases in the welfare state, you could do it with less than 10%.

Russia is currently doing it with 13%.

The former Communists have a more Capitalist tax code than we do.


16 posted on 05/04/2014 5:24:24 PM PDT by shibumi (Cover it with gas and set it on fire.)
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To: SeekAndFind

1040RealEZ:
Line one: How much did you make last year?
Line two: Send it in.


17 posted on 05/04/2014 5:24:32 PM PDT by sasquatch
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To: SeekAndFind

Here is my counter proposal: Flat Tax


18 posted on 05/04/2014 5:25:08 PM PDT by taxcontrol
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To: Chode

I like that idea


19 posted on 05/04/2014 5:26:33 PM PDT by GeronL (Vote for Conservatives not for Republicans!)
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To: SeekAndFind

There’s one for you, nineteen for me


20 posted on 05/04/2014 5:27:02 PM PDT by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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