Your friendly reminder that the IRS *could* process everyone's taxes and just send us our just overpay but instead they make the tax code terrifying and convoluted in order to make lower class folks overpay to cover the billions that the wealthy move around in tax evasion.

Companies like h&R block actually lobby to prevent the IRS from offering even the free returns to low income folks.

Part of the reason the average person somehow lets people get away with this shit is because the "displaced millionaire" scam that our US society impresses upon us makes many of us think that someday we too will get those convenient benefits.
If only we do it just right.

These issues do not exist in a vacuum. The IRS targets low earners for fraud just like social safety net users get targeted for drug testing etc.
We are actively, in policy, punished for being poor.

Feudalism never went away, it just rebranded and got an investment portfolio.

You: this would be invasive
Me: every financial institution you do business with already reports that to the IRS. You filing taxes is organizing that data for them, not giving them new data.

The reason we can file digitally is literally because they already have your W-2

Muting this because Y I K E

if you're mad remember organizations choose how they use their power.
The IRS is no more blameless than ICE or other three letter government agencies.

I muted this but all of you saying the IRS "doesn't pass the laws" are conveniently ignoring that gov agencies interpret and choose how to enforce laws. They're directly responsible for how they hurt or fail to help regular people.
That's why govt hiring practices matter.

You have not found a gotcha in my thread, you just haven't expanded your activism to understand self oversight organizations, appointments, and policy vs law.