You know, I'm really annoyed about the whole US tax situiation.
It just pisses me off that the average person cannot file their taxes online without paying a private company. You know, with how much the IRS encourages people to e-file they would at least have plain-jane online submittable forms for anyone to use on their own site.

Like, I can do the free file still, as can most of my friends, but the cutoff is $54K, which isn't very much in a lot of areas. It doesn't seem right that people either have to mail in their return which slows things down by weeks, or pay someone so they can do their taxes.

(I did mine and my roommate's today. we are, oddly, both owning the US and getting back from NY. And it gave us both a prompt to have our rebate this spring direct deposited... which I was wondering about since I'm not getting a fed refund to direct deposit right now.)

I feel you. When I lived in the US, filing online was a long, kafkian, baroque process, at the end of which I owed them US$1000, despite them taking 30% off of my measly $30K in the first place.
Glad to be back home, where I'm like 5 tax brackets above where I was in the US (in relative terms, of course), and they return most of the 10% they take off my paychecks during the year.
Sales tax is a bitch at 19%, though.

No, it's not the taxes themselves. I honestly don't mind the paying of them (me=liberal), and I don't make a lot so mine are really low.
I don't like that my options are either
1. fill out forms on PAPER and mail them in, get refund in three months, like it's the time of Charlemagne or something, or
2. Pay a third party for access to online filing. The IRS doesn't offer it, if I want to file online (which they want everyone to do and push heavily), I need to pay Intuit or H&R Block or someone for the privilege of doing my own taxes (which I'm more than able to do on my own, and indeed was paid by other people to do so for years).

The IRS should have a basic webform that just looks like the 1040 where you do it on paper first, and fill it out online, so you don't need to give someone else your money to let you give the IRS your money.

The IRS should have a basic webform that just looks like the 1040 where you do it on paper first, and fill it out online,

That's what we've got, only it's already prefilled from the information they have on file. You read it through (and can correct it, though I've never had to) and just hit 'submit', then wait for them to deposit your refund.

Huh. I think in Canada you also have to use a private sector tax program to file your taxes online. At least, that's how I did it. It only cost me $16 though, so I don't complain.

For me if I didn't make under $54K it would be in the neighborhood of $75 to efile since I have to do a long form with a schedule C and home office deduction. Which is utter bull, and if I ever do have to pay I'll go back to paper and mail.