The US is also "pay as you earn" and automatically gets deducted from salaries. For most people working as employees, the tax return is just for you to confirm your numbers with the government's, specify any deductions if necessary, and see if you owe any extra or are entitled to a refund.
I am honestly surprised that learning how to fill out the IRS form is not part of the high school curriculum.
The software to make this isn't too complicated. This has more to do about being able to legally distribute it since an open-source solution could have been distributed already, but there is too much liability in doing so.
If you want to add e-file to the software, you have to be approved by the IRS and that's where the lobbying/corruption comes into play.
> For most people working as employees, the tax return is just for you to confirm your numbers with the government's, specify any deductions if necessary, and see if you owe any extra or are entitled to a refund.
In the UK, for most people working as employees there is no tax return. There's no numbers to confirm, no deductions, no extras.
I am honestly surprised that learning how to fill out the IRS form is not part of the high school curriculum.
The 1040 form is only two pages long:
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf
The software to make this isn't too complicated. This has more to do about being able to legally distribute it since an open-source solution could have been distributed already, but there is too much liability in doing so.
If you want to add e-file to the software, you have to be approved by the IRS and that's where the lobbying/corruption comes into play.