Iowa City, Iowa — With the federal tax filing deadline upon us, a University of Iowa accounting professor suggests America adopt what’s being done in many European countries, where the government prepares your taxes for you — for free.
Professor Ryan Wilson says our current electronic filing process is automated, so it wouldn’t be a great stretch for the IRS to go the next step and prepare our taxes, too.
Wilson says a program called ReadyReturn is already being used in nations including the UK, Denmark, Sweden, and Spain, where the government prepares its citizens’ taxes. He says the program is simple and it’s successful.
Many Americans have a healthy skepticism of the federal government, but Wilson thinks people would come around to loving the concept of having the taxing task of tax preparation handled by Uncle Sam, especially if it’s free.
As we saw during the pandemic with the vaccine and mask debates, there’s a large segment of the population that will question everything that comes from Washington DC. While those people they may never trust the IRS to do their taxes for them, Wilson believes this is a winning idea.
