The former North Carolina senator laid out the idea in an audio podcast posted on his Web site April 7. For Americans whose employers and financial institutions send all of their relevant tax data to the government, the IRS would calculate their bills and mail them completed returns, which he called "Form 1." Filers could sign the form and return it, or reject it and file their own return if they disagreed with anything in the IRS's calculations. Form 1 would not be an option for taxpayers with more complicated returns. "Hardworking families who pay their taxes shouldn't have to pay tax preparers, too," Mr. Edwards said in the podcast. "With Form 1, there is only one thing you have to do — sign and return it."
A professor of economics at the University of Chicago, Austan Goolsbee, calculated in a July 2006 report for the Brookings Institution that about 52 million Americans could benefit from a "simple return" idea, a number that includes those whose financial information is in the possession of the IRS and those eligible for a payment to the working poor called the Earned Income Tax Credit.
This doesn't sound unbelievably impractical to me. If all you're reporting is from your W-2 and maybe a 1099, it seems to me that the IRS side of this could be pretty much entirely automated. In 2004, Edwards' "Real Solutions for America" was by far the best set of useful policy proposals from any candidate, and it looks like this will remain a strength this time.
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