> I have to imagine government workers are already writing software to identify if we’ve all implemented it correctly
Because of the jurisdiction issue, even if each local (and for each location all relevant governmental tax authorities) had a clear API, interacting with them all, and dealing with the interactions between them recursively, is itself a large problem.
And from what I've seen from smaller jurisdictions, the automation software is all about simplifying a human-in-loop workflow rather than full machine-driven rules.
Since we're talking about a hypothetical solution, in theory this would have a spec and potentially even be further centralized.
I could imagine a world where the IRS ran the tax software for every taxing entity in the US. Each jurisdiction would have to configure their specs or potentially even codify the business logic. International would likely be tricky but it's similar to what is being done with ACH and other banking systems that are slowing moving to international. So, it's not impossible there's just not much of a push for it.
Because of the jurisdiction issue, even if each local (and for each location all relevant governmental tax authorities) had a clear API, interacting with them all, and dealing with the interactions between them recursively, is itself a large problem.
And from what I've seen from smaller jurisdictions, the automation software is all about simplifying a human-in-loop workflow rather than full machine-driven rules.