It obviously doesn’t have to be this way. All that information can be itemized and tracked automatically, the IRS just doesn’t do it that way because it predates the telephone.
In the US, that would require either dramatically simplifying the tax code or attaching your social security number to a hell of a lot more transactions. Medical expenses over 7.5% of income are deductible, so the IRS would need to know every time you buy aspirin, and CVS or Kroger or wherever you buy that needs to log your social security number. Educators are allowed to deduct the cost of school supplies, so the IRS would have to know every time they buy crayons (and whether those crayons are personal or classroom). Certain home improvements, so Lowes needs your SSN. If the guy you sold your PS3 to on Facebook is trading them as a business, then IRS probably needs you to report that transaction.
My bank already knows every time I buy stuff from the pharmacy. It also knows when I buy school supplies. It also knows when I buy hardware or materials for home improvement. It might not know if I sold my PS3 on Facebook, but Facebook certainly knows. Sometimes it’s ambiguous, like if I go to a big box retailer and buy drywall+aspirin+groceries it’d all be lumped together, so a little bit of modification would need to be done to how receipts are tallied and how the software works. This seems trivial, though.
And the government certainly knows, too. Hell, other governments probably know enough about me to file my taxes.
The biggest obstacle would be edge cases, like selling my PS3 to my neighbor’s kid in cash. There’s no record anywhere. In that case, yeah, it makes sense to require me to file because I need to create a record of the transaction myself.
In all other cases, this is just busy work. The information is already out there and already in ten different databases, it just isn’t being connected together because the IRS was created in a time when having such a complete digital transaction history was essentially impossible and because we want to pretend that we don’t live in a panopticon.
It obviously doesn’t have to be this way. All that information can be itemized and tracked automatically, the IRS just doesn’t do it that way because it predates the telephone.
In the US, that would require either dramatically simplifying the tax code or attaching your social security number to a hell of a lot more transactions. Medical expenses over 7.5% of income are deductible, so the IRS would need to know every time you buy aspirin, and CVS or Kroger or wherever you buy that needs to log your social security number. Educators are allowed to deduct the cost of school supplies, so the IRS would have to know every time they buy crayons (and whether those crayons are personal or classroom). Certain home improvements, so Lowes needs your SSN. If the guy you sold your PS3 to on Facebook is trading them as a business, then IRS probably needs you to report that transaction.
My bank already knows every time I buy stuff from the pharmacy. It also knows when I buy school supplies. It also knows when I buy hardware or materials for home improvement. It might not know if I sold my PS3 on Facebook, but Facebook certainly knows. Sometimes it’s ambiguous, like if I go to a big box retailer and buy drywall+aspirin+groceries it’d all be lumped together, so a little bit of modification would need to be done to how receipts are tallied and how the software works. This seems trivial, though.
And the government certainly knows, too. Hell, other governments probably know enough about me to file my taxes.
The biggest obstacle would be edge cases, like selling my PS3 to my neighbor’s kid in cash. There’s no record anywhere. In that case, yeah, it makes sense to require me to file because I need to create a record of the transaction myself.
In all other cases, this is just busy work. The information is already out there and already in ten different databases, it just isn’t being connected together because the IRS was created in a time when having such a complete digital transaction history was essentially impossible and because we want to pretend that we don’t live in a panopticon.
I use cash almost everywhere I can, and want as much as possible to avoid the pervasive data collection and handover that you endorse.
I don’t agree that “they already know” - and fight such efforts instead of taking them for granted.
And for you, you should have to file your own taxes.
But if I’m going to be giving all my data to every agency on Earth they might as well do my fucking taxes for me.