Because they don’t know all the idiosyncracies of your return, but they can find a lot of it really easily, and why you need to justify why you might qualify for x rebate on y amount. You also don’t owe your tax until it’s due, as many contractors and businesses pay their total tax at one time and not spread out like us plebs do, so filing a return just became the default for everyone.
If that were true, why do we need to declare taxes? Why wouldn’t they just come for people who they know are breaking the law?
Because they don’t know all the idiosyncracies of your return, but they can find a lot of it really easily, and why you need to justify why you might qualify for x rebate on y amount. You also don’t owe your tax until it’s due, as many contractors and businesses pay their total tax at one time and not spread out like us plebs do, so filing a return just became the default for everyone.
If you pay wrong amount, they mail you the amount you owe.
Why bother? Because you aren’t thinking of the middle man!
Also if you’re wealthy and can afford great lawyers you can save a good amount more because IRS won’t bother.