As I'm completing my taxes for this year, it dawns on me that although there have been great strides made in software solutions to help a taxpayer file their taxes, there is still a long way to go.
For example, we receive all of the taxable events that were reported to the IRS via different forms from the tax reporting entity (it could be your employer, your bank, etc). These forms are generated by different payroll companies and/or financial institutions. Many of them now offer the ability to pull their records directly into tax programs such as Tax Cut and TurboTax, but there is still a need to know which entity reported the taxable event for you, and then there is the need to authenticate every company's website.
Wouldn't it be easier to directly interface with the IRS and be able to pull all of the tax liabilities that have been reported to them for the tax year? From that point, you would be able to reconcile all of your income that has been reported and then work to itemize your deductions against those reported events.
I find that managing your paper work that has been sent to you and then having to attempt to download it if you're lucky from your broker, your bank, your employer, and potentially your mortgage company is tedious at best, and a exercise in futility at worse.
I don't know what the risk to pulling all of your financial data from the IRS would be, if they can provide a secure method in getting access to your data, then this would be a huge timesaver and avoid unnecessary auditing of all records and the extra time to manage all of the different sources of tax forms that you have to work with.
