The Kansas City roots of why filing taxes is a uniquely American pain | Opinion

Who among us likes paying taxes? Regardless of your patriotism, your sense of responsibility or your desire to benefit the common good, it’s still painful to stroke a check to the Internal Revenue Service. As far as unpleasant interactions with the government go, paying taxes can be up there with standing in line at the DMV or being beaten by a rogue drug task force.

You may be anticipating an anti-tax screed — but Americans actually ought to be proud to pay their taxes, and many are. People largely realize that taxes are what fund the highways that give us freedom to roam over a vast country. They enable the preservation of national parks and forests that make those journeys so fulfilling. And taxes pay for the rest of the countless government functions that gift life in America with so much reward (that is, when Congress bothers to fund the government at all).

Rather than taxes, it’s the tax return that needs to go.

Many people probably don’t realize that much of the rest of the developed world doesn’t file tax returns. After all, for the vast majority of taxpayers here and abroad, the government already has all the information it needs to determine their liability. Most folks receive W-2 or 1099 income, which is reported by payers and companies on behalf of their employees or contractors. Most Americans don’t itemize their deductions, and instead take the usually larger standard deduction ($15,000 for tax year 2025). Those who invest in brokerage accounts, IRAs, HSAs — or any of the rest of the alphabet soup of tax-advantaged vehicles — have information about them reported to the government, too.

So what gives? Why are Americans pretty much uniquely subjected to this complicated and expensive torture every spring?

The answer, as is so often the case, is largely turf protection and lobbying, led by the largest preparer of tax returns in the country: Kansas City’s own H&R Block. The brothers Richard and Henry Bloch could hardly have imagined that the small tax preparation firm they started in 1955 would explode to more than 12,000 offices in the next 70 years. Their story is a remarkable testament to the best of American entrepreneurial spirit.

But frankly, and with all due respect to a pillar of our community, they and firms like them — TurboTax, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax and others — have outlived their usefulness. The IRS should issue a preliminary statement of each taxpayer’s liability after relevant information is collected early in each year, then issue refunds and bills as appropriate.

But what if the government is flat wrong about what I owe? What if I itemize my deductions? What if my tax situation is in some other way too complicated or unknown for the government to give me a fair shake? Simple: You file a tax return. Nothing changes for you, but millions of other Americans are relieved of a stressful burden on an annual basis. And accountants shouldn’t worry too much either. They’ll continue to prepare and file returns for businesses, trusts and people with unusual circumstances, or help with the existing pile of compliance necessary to provide the IRS with the information it needs.

This won’t be easy to accomplish, and not because it’s beyond the administrative abilities of the IRS. On that front, the change could be phased in over a few short years, and would result in a dramatic streamlining of the service’s functioning. It’s the big tax prep companies that stand in the way, and it’s high time for them to step aside and let the IRS become the nation’s new largest tax preparer.

We can’t avoid death, and we can’t avoid taxes — but maybe we can avoid the tax return.

Sam Burnett is an attorney and stay-at-home father living in Kansas City.