Background More than 20 other countries implement prepopulated returns for some of their taxpayers. In the 1990s,
Michigan offered return-free filing but dropped the program due to lack of participation, and
Minnesota proposed but did not enact return-free filing. In March 2017, the effort to establish ReadyReturn in California was the subject of an episode of
NPR's
Planet Money podcast.
Origins In 2004, the
FTB staffers told
Joseph Bankman, a leading scholar in the field of tax law, a clinical psychologist, and professor of law and business at
Stanford Law School, that they realized that they had all the data they needed to fill out Californians' tax returns for millions of Californians whose entire income came from one job. In 2005, Joseph Bankman worked with the state of California to create ReadyReturn, a pilot study with a completed tax return prepared by the state (not an individual or tax professional) that was available to single, no-dependant, standard-deduction, one-employer, wages-only taxpayers for the 2005 filing season. When the FTB launched the ReadyReturn website, Intuit sued and lobbied California legislators to kill the program. Of the 50,000 participants in the pilot, 38,500 chose to ignore the return and approximately 11,500 filed it. A survey of pilot participants found more than 90 percent said they saved time using ReadyReturn and that it was more convenient than the system they had used previously. 99 percent said they would use it again the next year. 0.3 percent of ReadyReturn filings contained errors versus 3.1 percent of non-ReadyReturn filings.
Opposition Between 2001 and 2010,
Intuit Inc., maker of the tax-preparation software
TurboTax, spent more than $1.7 million (equivalent to $ in ) on
lobbying in an attempt to kill ReadyReturn. California State Controller
Steve Westly said he was stunned by the response from taxpayers who used the program as part of the pilot project, about 96 percent of whom said it is a service government should provide, and one they would use again, "I absolutely have come to believe that ReadyReturn is the right thing to do".—California Controller, Steve Westly No ReadyReturn forms were used for the 2006 tax year, but the FTB revived it on their own for the 2007 tax year, expanding it to cover one million Californians.
Reception In 2012, 88,652 California taxpayers used the system, and, with paper returns costing more than seven times a ReadyReturn return to process, it saved the state an estimated $125,000. 99 percent stated they were satisfied with ReadyReturn, 97 percent stated this is the type of service government should provide, 96 percent stated it was more convenient than how they filed in the past, 95 percent stated it saved them time, and 98 percent stated they would use it again. == CalFile ==