To the Point
Americans Spent 225 Million Hours on Tax Preparation
The IRS already collects most of the information from employers and banks that you've just used to fill out your income-tax form. Why couldn't it send you a pre-filled return, let you make needed changes and send it back in?
By Warren Olney • • 1 min readThe IRS already collects most of the information from employers and banks that you've just used to fill out your income-tax form. Why couldn't it send you a pre-filled return, let you make needed changes and send it back in? President Obama's former economic advisor, Austin Goolsby, says "return-free filing" of income taxes could save a collected $2 billion and 225 million hours of time filling out income tax forms. Will it ever happen? Not likely, according to a report co-produced by NPR and ProPublica, where Liz Day is director of research.
