There are two big and one sizable softwares to use when you tackle taxes yourself. Two of them, both big ones, we're sued and lost a class action suit some years ago by embedding "mistakes" that led to IRS advantage every single time.
By then, I was married to the third. I was married to it because importing the previous year was just too easy.
As the IRS game goes, there may be $5 at the bottom of a stack of forms and you know it's there, but is it worth an hour of forms to get to? The answer is a resounding no. With the software I used, however, it prepopulated all of those forms in between and made that adventure a five minute one.
Then, this company who made the software grew and became more popular.. over the years I notice forms aren't attached to it anymore. You can still get them, but you pretty much have to knkw they're there. Importing helped for several years, but then that stopped amd made accessing them impossible... I figured they had been removed, but when I go to the IRS site and dig for them, there they are. So... the question becomes how to get to them.
You can't tell me this isn't by design and purposely done. So, don't try.
So of I add a form to the return, even if by entering the form name/number, and it will still prompt for the forms required to "get to" the targeted form. So.. I manually enter them now because the auto population (including name and social) is no longer there.
There is no way this isn't by design and by some pretty heavy collaboration between that company and the IRS.
However....
I was audited in 2008 because I "missed" a 1099 for selling some stocks... they weren't my stocks, they were me ex wife's. She tried to slip that past. I didn't catch it, as I didn't even know she owned them- the IRS caught them quickly. And issued an audit.
Turns out her dumb ass lost money on those shares, and once I proved to the IRS the shares didn't fall from the sky in her (our) possession and that she paid for them with post tax dollars, all was well. I was using the software way back then, too. The meeting in Philly which I was represented in resulted in an adjustment in my favor and a response that my taxes were "as complete as they had ever seen"... I took that as encouragement.
I was audited two years ago too... this time the state got me for $5k... bastards... the agent and I had words- strong words- and he ended up "filing my taxes for me", and didn't allow a single receipt for material purchased as deduction from income... in affect making my margin 100%. Much of the material was internet purchased and he said an email and/or credit card statement weren't legitimate receipts... well, hell, revenuer, they're the only receipts you get!! ....but that isn't where he nailed me.
He nailed me by forcing me to amortize an expense which I wanted to claim in its entirety and all at once. He said "that's what people do (amortize)"... I asked "where does it say I HAVE to?"... it doesn't say I have to, anywhere.. it cost me up front and I wanted to deduct it, in whole, the same year... he wouldn't let me because "that's not what people do". I THINK I could have made a stink out of it and filed the way I wanted to, but... that would have led to many years of extreme scrutiny I have no doubt- and thats because that's how those bastards work. So. I ate it. And, I have two more years left to amortize what he wouldn't let me take all at once at a rate of $12.5k every year.
That alone makes taking the standard disadvantageous.
