If you self-file, these small amounts add huge mental burden and information overload, even with the best software tool.

For “relatively” small amounts of income,

• the tax consultant would need to ask you questions and make professional decisions. Like professional doctors, lawyers, accountants, she has to be prudent not to get herself into trouble. Her extra effort would be … remembered and come back to “haunt” you when you finally discuss her professional fees.
• if you use DIY software, then the the small amounts could require an software upgrade 🙁

— Q: is it unlawful (not “illegal”), unethical,, to put incorrect data on tax returns?

%%A: I contributed tax dollars during my 8Y stay, and won’t receive any benefit in return. This is “The_system”, unfair to H1B immigrants like me.

Q: Why do we bother with these small amounts of income?
A: OK the paying institution already sent the same data to IRS, so we are on the hook….

In reality, millions of tax payers omit deductions/credits and incomes.  Probably 1 in 3 had zero omission.   Even if IRS determine it’s an amount of tax evasion, they would probably leave it aside and focus on the big fish.

Suppose you omitted some small incomes. If you also omitted some deductions/credits, they could offset the omitted small incomes. Net impact of all the omissions could be an even smaller figure, like a “rounding error”. Therefore, I think IRS would evaluate the dollar impact.

IRS is understaffed. Their fraud surveillance system is increasingly automated to reduce labor cost. It takes effort to find evidence and prove a tax evasion case.

The ROI of the audit system has a numerator measured in tax_dollars_recovered. Their decision is guided by expected_tax_dollars_to_be_recovered. Therefore, if your taxable income is a small sum, then I doubt they would bother analyzing it.

A comparable situation — California state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.

Similarly, when I set out to free up my gmail storage, I won’t spend time on small disk hogs.