Professor Ventry Comments for New York Times on ‘Return-free' Tax Filing
Professor Dennis Ventry commented for the New York Times on "return-free filing," a system in which the government provides taxpayers with pre-populated tax forms using information it already collects from employers, financial institutions, and other sources.
Most taxpayers with simple tax situations could simply sign off on the government's assessment of their tax or refund, while those with more complicated returns could save time by downloading all of the financial information the government has collected about them during the year, said Ventry, who has studied return-free filing programs in California. Such a system, if implemented by the federal government, "can help all 145 million taxpayers," he said.
Though private tax preparation companies claim to offer some of the same benefits, Ventry said they won't be as helpful as a government return-free filing program due to privacy restrictions on the private sector's use of taxpayer return information and the simple fact that the government already has an inventory of all the information.
Professor Ventry is an expert in tax policy and legal ethics. His research interests include tax expenditure analysis, family taxation, professional responsibility and standards of care, tax filing and administration, tax compliance, public finance, and tax and legal history. In addition, he was recently added as a co-author on the casebook, Federal Income Taxation with Paul McDaniel, Martin McMahon, Jr., and Daniel L. Simmons.