How Do We Handle the Future of Taxes and Data - Special Guest: Annette Nellen TCAST

Death and taxes. Both are inevitable and nobody much likes either one. Especially taxes. The system is naturally inefficient and more than a few people of all political persuasions can’t help but think that some if not all of that money is just vanishing into thin air. 
Fortunately, there are a few out there working to reform the Byzantine mess that is the IRS and the U.S. tax code. One of those brave souls is Annette Nellen. Annette is a professor at San Jose State University and has been on so many boards and received so many awards in the area of taxation and accounting that it would take all the space in this article to list them all. Her most recent article that made a wave or two in tax land advocates for getting rid of the standard April 15 due date. 
This in part has to do with the previously mentioned inefficiency of the current system. Given that all of your tax data is collected digitally and then digitally deposited in your account, why do you have to deal with a bunch of cumbersome paper forms, or digital forms that duplicate them, and then send in your tax return, most likely digitally? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier for most people if the IRS just sent you your return? No forms, no waiting, no glitches that lose your return in the mail, they just calculate what you owe and send it to you. Unless you are self-employed or make a lot of charitable donations this system should work very well. 
Some object that they really don’t trust the IRS will their data. The truth is though that they have it already. That’s precisely why the direct return would work. However, Annette has some ideas that would make the situation more palatable. 
First and foremost, all of your data would go into your own unique cloud. This would work whether you work at Starbucks or run a public benefit data management and protection company. That way, you could sync different incomes, donations, accounts, and the software to process it all in one place. The big benefit would be that you could even set the system to process a return for you on your own timetable. It wouldn’t change the total, just when you get it. Or, a person could adjust their various exemptions on the fly if they want to tweak their taxes so that they are only ever paying in exactly what they are required to, eliminating the need for a return at all. 
This could be especially beneficial for those who are self-employed. One of the hazards of working for yourself is hoping you don’t wind up owing a massive amount at the end of the year. Many just set aside money out of their income for that specific purpose. The system Annette proposes would allow the self-employed to pay throughout the year. 
This brings up a question if this would work so well, what is the real hold up? In a word – technology. Not that the technology doesn’t exist. Rather, the IRS and government, in general, doesn’t have it yet. Government agencies tend to lag very far behind in the technology department. There are a lot of reasons for that, but you can also be sure that it will change in the years to come. As the professor observes, the generation currently in college is growing up largely technology dependent. They live in a world where people don’t use cash, or even a card, they just pay with their phones and call it a day. As they move up the ranks in the private and public sector, the need for the technology even in the most backward of government warehouses will need to catch up. 
All of this is just the beginning of course. There are a lot of issues with our current system and many things that could be done to reform it. Until then, make sure your taxes are in on time.
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