151–160 of 454 posts
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Or $650 which was my fee from H&R last year for one hour of service. (I own a California LLC) Anybody know a good alternative? I'm thinking about trying TurboTax Self-Employed for $89.99.
I use TurboTax Self-Employed and it works pretty well for me. It handles everything I can think of for my 2 LLCs. It takes some time though. If you have all your expenses already worked out, then it's not too bad.
Intuit certainly does this, but blaming them for our overly complex taxes is wrong. They might move the needle a little bit but they aren't the primary driver. The primary driver is all the constituencies of all the little things in our taxes that add up to make them complicated. Like ObamaCare? That came with two additional forms. Live in a high tax state and like deducting your state taxes? That makes things more c…
That's not the point of the article at all, nor of Intuit's lobbying. Even with the current complexity of the tax code, the IRS could easily auto file your taxes for you if your income is below a certain very high level and you do not have any special complications. Such a system would work for 98% of Americans. This has nothing to do with what deductions are available or whatever complexity they introduce into the s…
It's not all Intuit lobbying. Many politicians of a particular faction oppose return free filing because they want to keep tax proxess as painful as possible to make people emotionally susceptible to anti-tax and, more generally, anti-government rhetoric.
Serious question: Is it possible for society to criminalize rent seeking behaviors like this? It seems clear that there's no benefit to keeping the status quo tax filing system except for the benefit of tax preparers. What's stopping the US from creating a law that says if a company attempts to lobby for something in bad faith (like the tax example), they will face sanction?
A tangential issue: It seems almost impossible to me that the systems of tax preparation services, whether cloud-based, local software, or offline, are secure. The standard of security is, make the target more expensive to breach than it's worth to the attacker. How much would it be worth to have access to the tax returns of large swaths of the population? I don't know the answer, but I'm guessing it's easily worth b…
With cloud-based or in-person tax preparation, there's a risk that a single breach could compromise many, many tax returns. With offline software you have no such exposure, it's not like it's exposing open ports to the internet.
At least in Canada there's a whole slew of free tax preparation software available, offline desktop and cloud-based. The government even lists the various free and paid options: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/esrvc-srvce/tx/ndvdls/netfile-impot...
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I've never met a doctor who wants people to be sick. I'm sure they're out there, but the great majority wants to help people, and would gladly be put out of business.
> I've never met a doctor who wants people to be sick. i don't think this is meant in an interpersonal, malicious sense.
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The problem is that every individual provision is popular with one group or another. But we could move to a system like the UK has where taxes are calculated for you and if you don't have contractor income you don't even need to file. But this would need changes to things like the Married Filing Jointly status.
Married filing jointly is one of the more sexist things codified in US law. It basically says women make no money and the man has to provide for everyone with a big salary so deductions and credits for the big earner. Or it says that if you're a dual income bunch of shmucks, that your wife must make 80% of what you do. Think about when these laws were written and look at it through a historical context. Once you do,…
My parents were audited by the IRS for 5 years straight. They were convinced that my father "was hiding income through losses in your wife's business." My father was a surgeon; my mom ran an antiques shop. The IRS auditors setup camp in our living room for a month going on five years. That quote was straight from the lead auditor's mouth. I remember it very starkly as a young teenager. (I said hi to them each morning on my way to and from school) It really peeved me that they viewed my mom (the woman) as a failure and only a place for my father (the man) to "hide income."
Every year they came to the same results. My mom's bookkeeping was a mess, but she always overpaid her taxes and we got a refund at the end of the audit. The best kicker? My mom made more than my dad. The IRS thinks women should make less than men (by word and by audit).
As for the historic reasons of this thinking, see my reply below.
If married filing jointly isn't sexist, why are the income brackets different? Even for married filing separately, why are they different than for single people? Sit and think about it for a minute.
If trump administration actually manages to simplify tax code and kill the stupidity corporations induce via lobbying such that I can file my own taxes. I would have a lot of respect for him.
I live in New Zealand. I don't have to file taxes if my income is a standard wage my tax payments are automatic. My employer deducts them from my wage and they are sent to the IRD (Our government tax dept). My student loan and super payments are also automatic. If there is anything wrong then at the end of the tax year I can file to correct things. I also get donations rebates, this is a one page form that lists all…
If all you have is a simple income in the US, then the 1040ez is a single page and you can file it for free online if you make under a certain amount. You can pay a few dollars to file online if you make more.
Obamacare has added an extra level of complexity now, but that is also very simple if you don't need or want the subsidy.