I didn't use it, but have a question for anybody who did...did it automatically fill it out for you with all the information the IRS already has?

If not there's really little value in the effort as that's what makes doing taxes terrible -- reentering a bunch of information which various providers have already sent in, all tied to your SSN, and then not provided back to you when you need it. It's really only collected to be used as a "gotcha" if you're ever audited.

I don't mind paying my fair share of taxes, but the system in the U.S. is beyond stupid.

That seems like the killer competitive feature for filing directly with the IRS. My taxes aren't super simple, but literally every income source I report when I file is info the IRS has already. Tax software that pre-filled all that in and then just asked me questions about deductions and exemptions would be much faster and less error prone and convince me to switch in a heartbeat.

I don't think the IRS doesn't actually get all of your W2s, 1099s in time to do your taxes. I've made a few mistakes, and it always took the IRS a year or two to catch them with the info they have (and I'm sure automatically). The big kicker is the 1099 that is generated when they sell stock from an RSU grant to cover ordinary income taxes of that grant. Ugh.

Using TurboTax, I usually have to add them by importing a PDF, and then double check that they didn't make any errors in the import (this year they forgot to add taxes my wife paid on her W2, oops!). The value of tax prep software isn't in "knowing" all your forms, however, I can get those easy enough. It is in asking questions and doing all the computations. Seriously, a decision tree and some auto computed fields would be good enough.

> I don't think the IRS doesn't actually get all of your W2s, 1099s in time to do your taxes.

It doesn't need to? It should have all your information from prior year pre-entered, except the wage numbers that change.

That's the value proposition. At least don't make people re-enter their address and employer information again. (unless it changed, obviously)

My w2s aren't that stable, there aren't many that change year to year.

I don't have to re-enter very much, and the import from PDF means you enter even less. It is a huge step up from having to do my taxes by hand by editing PDFs and maintaining a spreadsheet when I was in China because tax software couldn't deal with the foreign income exclusion yet.

But ya, if I only had w2s to worry about, I would expect to file nothing like when I was paying Chinese/Swiss taxes (well, China had a weird self report you had to do yearly, but it was in Chinese and I just copied the numbers via a powerpoint management gave us). Of course, in either country, if you have a non-trivial situation, you had to file something as well.

I would be interested to see a comparison of people using TurboTax v. the IRS software. With TurboTax you pay a B.S premium up front, but at least you know they have some incentive to find refunds for you as much as is possible

> at least you know they have some incentive to find refunds for you as much as is possible

To the extent IRS leadership has political incentives, it's in making it easier for ordinary Americans to get a refund.

More importantly, it's not the 90% of tax prayers screwing over the government at tax collection time.

At least as of now, the kinds of people who get a lot of deductions can't use this software. You can't itemize at all, and only a few credits and deductions are allowed.

https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/irs-direct-file...

I suspect that the IRS will never have the kind of support to go seeking out deductions. They're probably happy to leave that to Intuit.

I tried it this year, thought it was great! It could indeed be made still more convenient, but it was pretty convenient already.

> but low turnout

> which is limited to 12 states

I mean that would be why it had low turnout...

Twelve states but including the four most populous. Assuming I did my math right, almost one third of the entire US population.

Edit: > 100 million people

I just want other people to test it first.

Low-turnout because not everyone is convinced that the rumor of United States IRS website being hosted in a foreign country of Montrnegro is false or not,

  id.me