[hundt]

Sorry, I'm still not clear what you're referring to. There are multiple ProPublica articles linked in this thread and I'm not sure what statement you're paraphrasing with your "soup to nuts" quote. Are you referring to this article[0], which says the OMB suggested in 2002 that the IRS develop a free option, and the IRS opposed it then and consistently since?

Regarding your second point: the IRS has a lot of documents but it is dwarfed by the total amount of information needed to prepare a return. Even just to determine who your dependents are is a complex flowchart[1] for which there are no official documents in existence that can provide the answers. These kinds of things come up all the time when doing ordinary people's taxes, not just in esoteric situations. (I know because I used to volunteer to do it.)

[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

[1] https://apps.irs.gov/app/vita/content/globalmedia/dependency...