Tax returns are a complicated pain on purpose

+ welcoming bugs back into the garden US Edition - Today's top story: Why can't the IRS just send Americans a refund – or a bill? [View in browser]( US Edition | 22 March 2021 [The Conversation]( Academic rigor, journalistic flair Many taxpayers likely breathed a sigh of relief after the Internal Revenue Service delayed its tax filing deadline by a month because of the financial mess caused by the coronavirus. But even in pre-pandemic times, preparing and filing taxes was a real pain – and that’s mostly by design, writes Beverly Moran, a professor emerita of law at Vanderbilt University. The federal government has enough income and financial details about most American taxpayers to essentially do their taxes for them – as many countries including the U.K. and Spain do. Yet, despite past efforts to offer some type of return-free filing, it hasn’t happened in the U.S. If that makes you angry, [Moran has a few ideas about who’s to blame](. Also today: - [‘Sex addiction’ isn’t an addiction or a reason for killing]( - [Reuniting families torn apart by deportation]( - [The fall and rise of Christian dance]( Bryan Keogh Senior Editor, Economy + Business U.S. taxpayers spend more than $2 billion annually in tax preparation fees. Nora Carol Photography/Getty Images [Why can’t the IRS just send Americans a refund – or a bill?]( Beverly Moran, Vanderbilt University Dozens of prosperous countries save billions of dollars and hours annually by not requiring residents to fill out tax returns, so what is the United States waiting for? Politics + Society - [US has a long history of violence against Asian women]( Karen Leong, Arizona State University; Karen Kuo, Arizona State University US culture has long represented Asian American women as sexually seductive – showing how victims' gender and race cannot be separated when attacked by white male violence. - [What is a hate crime? 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