2. Determine ways to eliminate the need for filing routine income tax returns. The Secretary of the Treasury should eliminate or reduce the need for filing routine income tax returns by January 1998. The entire IRS filing process must be reengineered to be less paper-intensive. Most of the required financial information is already reported by business and financial institutions to the IRS. The IRS, not the taxpayer, should prepare or process the tax information. Taxpayers should only be required to file exceptions to the norm, e.g., unreported income or transactions, unusual deductions, etc. An annual closing statement could then be prepared and provided electronically to the taxpayer for review, validation, and acceptance or reconciliation. The primary emphasis would be on reconciliation before the fact rather than enforcement and penalties after the fact. Taxpayers could access the IRS data files by kiosk or by home personal computer to confirm that tax computations are accurate. They could then settle their accounts electronically by either paying taxes due by a credit card or automated teller machine card or by directing the refund to a designated account using electronic funds transfer.[5] At any time during the year, the taxpayer would have the ability to determine if withholdings track with projected year-end tax obligations. Endnotes 5. Enabling legislation for federal agencies to accept electronic payments via credit or debit cards is included in H.R. 13, which was introduced January 5, 1993.
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