TurboTax plus Republicans wanting to make paying taxes as difficult as possible so people will vote to cut taxes

The IRS is actually going test pilot such a program in a few states in the near future.

Also, the IRS only escalates straight to jail if it's incredibly obvious you're intentionally committing tax fraud. If your forms are wrong they just send you a letter to fix it.

Link? I will instantly use it. Mostly to stick it to Intuit.

Why that isn't the default to begin with is anyone's guess

We have a "voluntary" tax system in the U.S. -- that's always been the situation. "Voluntary" doesn't mean that that you can choose to not volunteer to pay your taxes. It mostly just means that the way we run things, by default, it is each citizen's responsibility to calculate and pay their taxes each April.

American taxpayers filled out 1040 forms in the days before computers, a lot like they do now. The IRS selected certain fillings for audits, just like they do now -- sometimes because of an apparent discrepancy, and sometimes just at random.

It would be a lot more work, take a lot more resources, and be prone to a lot more error and lawsuits, if the IRS tried to calculate everyone's taxes for them. Even now that we are in the days of computers, it is much more efficient for the IRS to only audit a fraction of the filings submitted each year.

I'm also pretty sure our "voluntary" tax filling system has something to do with the Fourth Amendment and other privacy concerns. A lot of Americans very strongly believe that it is not the government's place to be all up in their private business.

-- EDIT to add:

There is a difference between whether it would be possible for the IRS to calculate individual citizens' taxes and whether we should abandon our voluntary tax system for one in which the IRS simply calculates the taxes owed by every citizen and send us each a bill. My original response was intended to address the latter, but now I'll say something about the former:

For someone whose single source of income is a job working for someone else, of course it is possible for the IRS to calculate your taxes. You've already volunteered all the information the IRS needs to do so. Your employer has already told the IRS exactly how much income you've earned and exactly how much of it you've had withheld for taxes. Remember when you signed that withholding paperwork with the HR department on your first day? That was the moment when you personally volunteered your income information and payments to the IRS. You've literally already been reporting your income and paying taxes on it ever since.

The way taxes work in practice for a single-income employee does not reveal the potential complexity of tax accounting for individuals who are self-employed, who have multiple sources of income, and anyone who doesn't want to make regular fillings and withholding payments throughout the year. The tax situation for single-income American employees is not the situation for all Americans. Not everyone has an employer who calculates their taxes and pays installments for them throughout the year.

It is common for Americans to have a single job with an employer who calculates and pays their taxes for them. This makes it very easy for the IRS to know exactly how much the taxpayer owes (or is owed) at the end of the year. If it ends up feeling to like this is the same thing as the IRS calculating your taxes for you, however, I'm guessing it's because you forgot that it's actually your employer who's been doing that accounting job for you all along, with each paycheck.

Not in the Netherlands, there it's all calculated for you and you just do the checking. If you have a more complicated situation like self employment or other stuff you may want to hire an accountant that will not only double check but also make sure you get the best outcome by doing some strange wizardry but for most people it's literally just go online, check the salary numbers etc, click okay and get some cash back to your account.

It's because our country is a corporate oligarchy.

Americans as a whole are very stupid and don't realize that the overwhelming majority of them can file for free. In fact, 100% of Americans can self-file (for free) if they can handle about an hour of basic paperwork, but for 70% of Americans, you can file taxes for free in less than twenty minutes. It's not hard at all.

But most people would rather Google "how to file taxes," click on the first sponsored link they see, and buy something before they ever actually try to do even a minute of research.

That's still dumb AF, they could easily do like many other countries do and send you a breakdown of what you owe/getting back and why. You look it over and go "looks good to me" and have to do nothing or "This part is wrong" or "I qualify for Y tax break/incentive/credit" and then file some proof and you're done.

But the tax prep companies lobby really hard to keep things as difficult as they are

Your employer is required to submit the amount you were paid and the taxes that were withheld. The IRS knows how much you owe assuming that is your one source of income and you don't have deductions beyond the standard.

That's only true if you're getting paid cash under the table, make tips, or are self-employed. Your job reports your earnings to the IRS.

Because Congress creates really, really complicated tax laws that reduce tax burdens for business losses and obviously favor a structure that if you're wealthy enough you can exploit it for things that aren't actually contributing to our economy. Regular person with a few deductions that might go over a standard deduction? You might want some help with that, even if you're "doing it yourself" with the help of software (just like almost all of tax preparers do) or if you're just doing a standard deduction, it is easy.

Why can't you just fill out a 1040EZ in a webform and file online through the IRS?

Companies like Intuit lobby Congress so that the IRS can't just make it easy for most people. For example, the IRS wanted to just have their own app on a website to help you do your taxes for free just like TurboTax but nope.

As an example, you can specifically blame Intuit as an example that has actively tried to limit the IRS making tax filing free and easy for most Americans.

The same thing has happened with weather in the US. NOAA/NWS pretty much provides all weather data and RADAR data to the public for free. They also provide a public API and all those weather apps either directly or indirectly get their data from there for the US.

Why don't they have an app like all these weather services do? Well companies lobbied so NWS isn't allowed to. The best they can do is provide a website that you can "use like an app." Paying extra for that up-to-date RADAR feed in your weather app? Guess what? You already did through taxes and now you get to pay a private company to simply display it in their interface.

You can specifically blame AccuWeather as an example of a company that actively has tried to limit the NWS and actually lock the public out of the data that they paid for through taxes.

Congress has the power to end this non-sense but does not. I'm sure this won't surprise anyone when I say this but US law is slanted towards empowering businesses and lowering accountability.