Boston Globe Editorial Staff: Please, turn in your PC/Mac and all electronic writing programs. You have lost your privileges to write editorials.
Cause for cessation of privileges: You’re too fucking stoopid for your own good and dangerous to the public.
FOR MANY people with simple finances, filing a federal tax return is an unnecessary chore. Employers report workers’ income to the Internal Revenue Service. And perhaps 9 million taxpayers claim no dependents or major credits, opt not to itemize deductions, and have little or no interest or capital gains income. So why make them fill out paperwork, which still has to be checked against the government’s own figures?
Senator Barack Obama would eliminate millions of hours of such forced labor. The IRS would use its records to generate a so-called simple return for qualifying taxpayers. A filer who disagreed with the agency’s numbers could fill out a standard return. Otherwise, a taxpayer would sign it and send in a check or wait for a refund. This automatic tax return proposal is a winner, no matter who is elected in November.
Boston Globe Editorial Staff, you earned this
This suggestion seems to be encoding the old joke about a “new IRS Short Form”, which has only two lines: what you earned and what you owe, and they are the same.
Actually, many people overpay the IRS by failing to take appropriate deductions. I used to do my own taxes. I was a simple wage earner with a home mortgage, and my wife was working then. Easy, right?
One year, I built a new house, and suspected that there were hidden deductions there, so I hired a CPA, and guess what? The guy found LOTS of deductions I had never heard of. I then paid him extra to look over some of my recent returns. He would have deducted MUCH more than I did, WAY past his fee even, resulting in more in MY pocket and less in the IRS’s.
I haven’t tried to do my own taxes again since.
Now, some will say that TurboTax will do the same thing, and from the reports I hear, everyone who uses it is very satisfied with it, but the only REAL way to check it is to pay a CPA to look over the returns. The last time I asked my CPA about TurboTax, he started off by asking me how much of his time I wanted to pay for, since it would take him hours to tell me what was left out of the program.
All I know is that I just opened my mail, and I got a refund of about 90% of the OR income tax withheld, which will pay all my quarterlies (making me some interest while the $$$ waits for the quarterly deadlines), and having enough left over for a new rifle….That CZ Scout Rifle in 7.62 X 39 is looking more like a reality.
Hey RD, you are going to love that CZ rifle. Shoots real nice, very light, and just plain fun.