Hey IRS, You Do My Taxes!

So this morning, as I was reading my local Sunday newspaper, I found an interesting article titled "Would you want IRS doing your taxes?" I thought to myself, "Heck yeah! Wouldn't that be awesome?" I wrote a series on a National Sales Tax becoming the preferred tax system over the current US income tax system. One of the main reasons I would like to see something like that is because of the amount of time and, in my opinion, wasted resources going into figuring out how much you owe. The article was written by Robert Guy Matthews of the Wall Street Journal. In it he writes:

Imagine that filing your tax return was as simple as receiving a completed form from the Internal Revenue Service, signing it, then waiting for a refund of writing a check.

I definitely could! The proposed "Automatic 1040" system takes into consideration that the government already has 1) Your W-2 Forms, 2) 1099 Forms, 3) 1098 Forms, and 4) Your previous tax returns. Of course more complex taxes would require more data. California actually ran a pilot project called "Ready Return," which did states taxes for 11,500 people. Seems pretty cool. Guess who's against this proposal? Not suprisingly, the tax preparation industry. :) President Bush is also against this proposal because of the costs involved, but heck I'd be happy if a portion of what I'm already paying the government went to paying for this service. Of course, I don't want the government to raise taxes...I'm sure they can find some cash out of the $29 billion set aside for special projects by our government. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an online copy of the article. Sorry, but if you have a WSJ id, maybe you can find it. Anyway, with the 2005 tax season behind us, well the majority of us, I guess we can take solice in knowing it's over until next April. Well, Happy Easter Sunday! Hope this week turns out awesome!