> Imagine if you could help "fix" the IRS with auto-prepped tax returns (definitely seems like the hardest one on this list-- but it's also one that everyone wants to see happen
Actually, its mostly hard politically, because not everyone wants to see it happen. Particularly, tax preparation firms and tax software sellers want tax returns to be difficult so that their business stays in demand, and lobby heavily against government pre-preparing returns, and the political right wants the personal tax process to be as painful as possible so that they can leverage anger at that process to get behind tax cutting moves.
There's also a whole mess of HUGE conflicts of interest and moral dilemmas with the issue of taking a private company's tax dollars, and using those tax dollars to develop and sell a competing product, which would then presumably reduce the revenue (and thus tax revenue) of the private company.
Actually, its mostly hard politically, because not everyone wants to see it happen. Particularly, tax preparation firms and tax software sellers want tax returns to be difficult so that their business stays in demand, and lobby heavily against government pre-preparing returns, and the political right wants the personal tax process to be as painful as possible so that they can leverage anger at that process to get behind tax cutting moves.