The Internal Revenue Service appears to be trying to join the digital age, but something is holding it back. Could it be an unyielding bureaucracy? Or maybe just plain incompetence?

Whatever the reason, the IRS doesn't even make the simple things simple, according to the New York Times. The newspaper points out that the most important data from an individual's yearly tax profile has already been sent to the government's computers. So why make the taxpayer prepare everything from scratch again?

Requiring taxpayers to file returns without being told what the government already knows makes as much sense "as if Visa sent customers a blank piece of paper, requiring that they assemble their receipts, list their purchases--and pay a fine if they forget one," said Joseph Bankman, a professor at the Stanford Law School.

That's a good argument by Bankman, who also points out that most developed countries already offer taxpayers a return containing all information already collected by the taxing authority. If the IRS were to do that, what would happen to the tax-support industry, a sector that continues to grow as Congress makes tax changes virtually every year?

In the weeks leading up to the April 15 filing deadline, we're going to hear many more ideas about ways to make the IRS more efficient. Just about any one of them would work because it certainly seems that the IRS needs to do something to join the 21^st century tech revolution.

For more on the IRS:
- see this New York Times article

Related Articles:
IRS YouTube site draws few viewers
IRS plans a little data mining to catch tax cheat
Paper returns cost the IRS millions