I hate Intuit for the reasons mentioned here. I’ll need to choose business accounting software soon and QuickBooks seems have a grip on that market, what are the alternatives I should look at?
Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
31–40 of 135 posts
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#32Why would I be mad at Intuit? They’re an amoral profit-seeking company seeking profit. I’m furious at the IRS and Congress for not providing me with a free, simple federal tax filing solution. I know there are free file programs for certain income brackets or tax situations, but it’s outrageous that the IRS has colluded with Intuit (and other paid tax preparers) by strongly recommending that taxpayers file electronic…
Why would I be mad at the guy who stabbed me? He is simply a collection of atoms following fatalistic processes. I'm furious at the knife and knife makers for not providing me with a stab-wound-free epidermis.
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#33You would think there would be more political will for a government to make taxation as smooth and painless as possible for its citizens. I don't hate paying income tax because I "lose" money, I hate it because the process is a massive pain in the ass, and if I make a mistake (how can you not), I risk being fined, or worse.
Turbo Tax also provides some kind of service to help you if the IRS comes after you for some errors. One of my friends paid extra for this, him made a simple calculation error in their tax return, the IRS came after him for it, and Turbo Tax didn't do shit because he made the error, not Turbo Tax. So they're giving you the opportunity to pay them extra to cover the cost of their mistakes.
I honestly think more people would be willing to pay higher taxes if the process was low-effort for most people. For example, if you work for a company that witholds taxes from your paycheck, you shouldn't have to do anything; either you get a check in the mail if you over-payed, or a bill if you under-payed, and you answer a yes/no question to adjust your W-4 for the next year.
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#34You would think there would be more political will for a government to make taxation as smooth and painless as possible for its citizens. I don't hate paying income tax because I "lose" money, I hate it because the process is a massive pain in the ass, and if I make a mistake (how can you not), I risk being fined, or worse. Turbo Tax also provides some kind of service to help you if the IRS comes after you for some e…
> I honestly think more people would be willing to pay higher taxes if the process was low-effort for most people.
TBH I think this is why Intuit has been so successful in their lobbying efforts. A key goal of many politicians is to create tax breaks for the rich, and by making taxes as complicated as possible, they can trick the populace into agreeing to just about anything that would "simplify" the tax code.
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#35>How
They have lobbyists [0][1], and you don't. But don't worry, "experts" and oligarchs tell us that corruption here is among the lowest in the World.
>Using lobbying, the revolving door and “dark pattern” customer tricks, Intuit fended off the government’s attempts to make tax filing free and easy, and created its multi-billion-dollar franchise.
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
>The biggest obstacle, the New America experts warn, is the lobbying power of Intuit and its allies.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-21/california...
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#36I use TurboTax.
The reason I use it is that I've used it in the past and I know it works for my somewhat weird tax situation. It sucks. Intuit is a terrible company. But there is no way to know that I'll be able to actually navigate the wizard for some other product before I dive in. And all of the free options definitely don't support my situation. If I wanted free I'd be stuck with the raw forms and I'm not confident I'd do it all right.
I'm a weirdo and I actually like the precision of doing taxes, but the consequences of botching it are very high. So I go with the thing I'm familiar with and I get mad that TurboTax is taking $110 of my dollars every year for crap that should be done much more simply.
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#37Between self-doers and people that just give their forms to their accountant lie Turbo-tax customers, at the knowledge minimum.
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#38They are frustrated, they're simply not aware that Intuit and other players have exercised regulatory capture to make it so awful and blame "the government" since the IRS is the face of it. Other modernized nations have nothing like this insanity, often sending people yearly reports they can accept (since for most cases they are accurate) or send in amendments. This is far from the only issue that business interests…
The government here (Spain) knows the money I make just as any government knows about its citizens. When I'm to do my taxes, I get an auto generated draft and the only thing I have to do is click the "Accept" button. You only have to fill your taxes manually if you're self employed or have some sort of earnings other than your job, in which case, the company that does you accounting, does the taxes for you too in 15…
> The government here (Spain) knows the money I make just as any government knows about its citizens.
The problem the IRS is trying to solve is collecting taxes on money they don't know about. For example, if you sell illegal drugs, you should be paying tax on that income. But obviously you don't report to the government the amount of illegal drugs you sell. So they can't just send you a bill for your taxes.
It is odd that every American has to suffer for this obscure corner case, but they probably lose a lot of revenue if they stop taxing drug dealers, so here we are.
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#39They are frustrated, they're simply not aware that Intuit and other players have exercised regulatory capture to make it so awful and blame "the government" since the IRS is the face of it. Other modernized nations have nothing like this insanity, often sending people yearly reports they can accept (since for most cases they are accurate) or send in amendments. This is far from the only issue that business interests…
The government here (Spain) knows the money I make just as any government knows about its citizens. When I'm to do my taxes, I get an auto generated draft and the only thing I have to do is click the "Accept" button. You only have to fill your taxes manually if you're self employed or have some sort of earnings other than your job, in which case, the company that does you accounting, does the taxes for you too in 15…
In the USA the government also knows the money you make. They have all the data they need to be able to generate a pre-filled draft, and taxpayers could use that as a starting point and modify it if they needed to take a large tax credit for installing solar panels, or some other such thing which the government doesn't necessarily know about.
But it's against the law. The law specifically prohibits the tax agency (IRS) from providing pre-filled tax forms for taxpayers. Why? Who knows... I can't read the minds of Senate and House members! But I'd very confidently place a bet that it's entirely because of careful lobbying by the two companies (Intuit and H&R Block) who make large amounts of money off the current system.
References:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22596072/irs-turbota...
https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you...
Re: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?
#40So many people offering explanations, and yet not a single one of them answers the OP's question. If you're upset that Intuit is engaging in lobbying (as you should be!), that might be an appropriate answer for a different question (eg: why doesn't the IRS just send us their own reports for us to approve?). Again, I am not defending Intuit's involvement in politics, but that's not the answer to the dark patterns question - let me try to answer that specific question:
For years, I kept experimenting with different approaches to filing my taxes. I started out with TurboTax, and being so painfully aware of their bad reputation, I kept trying out every alternative I could think of - including their biggest competitor TaxAct and three different tax firms. After all that work, I am back to using TurboTax. Obviously, it was not an easy decision given how hard I tried to avoid that path, and no, I didn't return to TurboTax because I got tricked by one of their dark patterns.
The simple answer for why the tax firms didn't work out is that the work they required in their onboarding equaled or exceeded the amount of work it would have taken me to do the whole thing in TurboTax myself. Mind you, this is just the onboarding piece - not including the emails and calls leading up to the onboarding and following the onboarding.
The least sophisticated firm just said: send us everything in a zip file. That sounded appealing until they started following up with a million questions. The medium-sophisticated firm (which was the most painful of all of them) asked me to use their web app which was essentially TurboTax except that the questions were incredibly confusing so that I had to look up a ton of stuff just to make sure I was submitting the right thing. The third firm used a better web app, but it was still the same thing - the onboarding was essentially the same as just using TurboTax.
The obvious added value with tax firms is that they might catch something that you would have done wrong without their assistance, but these days TurboTax does offer the same service as well (and no, I never received some valuable piece of advice that justified the additional time and effort of working with a tax firm).
TaxAct is not bad, and would be my close second preference. In fact, they actually cover more niche cases (eg: filing certain types of corporate taxes). Even so, their UI/UX is only almost as good as TurboTax but not quite. As unpopular as TurboTax might be in this community, I think we can take a moment and appreciate their PM+UI/UX team, who used some pretty delightful copy and super slick design to turn an awful task into a rather pleasant experience.
And that's the ultimate answer to the OP's question as I see it... most people who are aware of the dark patterns in TurboTax know that it is not the cheapest way to file, but it's certainly not the most expensive either - and if you're looking for the easiest-to-use and fastest method to get the tax report checked off your list, then it's hard to find a better solution (granted, partially because they are helping create the world we live in).