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How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

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Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#181

Post by bluejekyll »

ebola1717 wrote: post #81
bluejekyll wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coporations need to make a profit. I don't think this necessarily makes them evil. The ones that you mention make a profit at the expense of people's wellbeing and happiness, so their profit motive definitely puts them in conflict with the better good of people. I would say corporations are generally amoral, not evil. This is why regulations for corporations are so important; they guarantee an appropriate way to make…

What can evil ever mean then? Like by that logic, slave-owners were not evil because they wanted to make a profit.

I guess for me, people can be evil, corporations aren't themselves capable of evil without people.

One thing I would like to see more of is individuals who perform evil acts inside companies be held personally liable. To many walk away without any consequences, see Texaco and Venezuela.

In terms of slave owners, the person is evil, and so was the system. I suppose you have a point that corporations can be evil in some cases, but I'd generally say that is because of a lack of regulations to restrain them, but this is obviously a gray area.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#182

Post by djrogers »

laser wrote: post #159
nojvek wrote: post #156

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.

In the first paragraph, "Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a bill yesterday to allow free government-prepped returns."

Note it says "free" and "government prepared". Setting aside that those are mutually exclusive concepts, that says nothing about simplifying taxes - it's just having the government do the complicated stuff instead of you (or your accountant).

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#183

Post by curun1r »

hackuser wrote: post #94

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…

> I am very doubtful that Intuit or H&R Block, for example, invest in security sufficient to protect themselves against that level of attack.

I can't speak to H&R Block, but I used to work for Intuit and I can attest that they took security very seriously. We were often subject to extreme security precautions despite the fact that the application I worked on didn't have any PII and the entire purpose of it was to make the information in our database available to the public and search engines. The rationale for forcing us to comply with the corporate security policies was that any breach of any Intuit service would be damaging to the Quickbooks and TurboTax brands. One of the reasons I left was because of the frustration with security compliance. The organization is incredibly slow moving on everything because the people in charge of security basically have carte blanche to shut down or delay projects until they've been properly screened. Intuit also doesn't cheap out on hosting either. I heard an internal rumor that they were spending $40m/yr serving TurboTax, and that didn't count the construction of the two dedicated data centers that they had built in previous years.

Whether their security is good enough to defend against a state-level adversary is hard to say, but my personal guess is that if you wanted to get at tax returns, it'd be easier for attackers to target the IRS directly, both because it'd probably be easier and you'd get access to the returns of 100% of Americans rather than just the percentage of Americans who use TurboTax Online. Keep in mind that most high-net-worth individuals don't use these online tools and, instead, have accountants and lawyers who prepare their returns.

Where Intuit has been vulnerable in the past has been in accepting fraudulent returns. For a while, you didn't need much more than an SSN and a few pieces of personal information to file a tax return, so identity thieves would file returns that had the highest possible refund and make off with that money. But that's not really a breach and I know they worked with the government in addressing that problem and I haven't heard much about it since.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#184

Post by Twirrim »

foota wrote: post #121
xupybd wrote: post #97

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…

The United States has a complicated tax code because it attempts to make things more "fair" for some people. Some of these are things people like, such as deductions for people with children, paying mortage, etc. Some are more dubious.

The UK has a similarly simple tax system as New Zealand. Taxes are taken out of pay every month, and that's it.

Every individual gets assigned a tax code, and that tax code defines how much is taken from your pay. That tax code takes in to account how many kids you have etc. etc.

The UK tends to approach tax deductions in a different way, preferring to subsidise stuff up front instead, so you never have to remember to file or figure out what your deductions are. You never paid out the money in the first place.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#185

Post by freehunter »

hackuser wrote: post #164
freehunter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer, of course, is "it's not that secure". Now, Turbo Tax and H&R Block aren't being hacked, but breaking into their systems isn't the easy way. And like you said, attackers want to take the easy way. The easy way is to get just enough info from your targets as it takes to extract money from them. And in the past few years, e-filing fraud has skyrocketed. The mantra is "file your taxes before someone else does…

> Turbo Tax and H&R Block aren't being hacked What is that based on? > It's really, really hard to attack Intuit. It's much easier to submit fraudulent tax forms and pocket the returns before anyone notices What makes you say that it's so hard? Also, the return on breaking into Intuit is millions of tax returns. Finally, attackers may not be after the refunds on a few returns, and more interested in a massive intelli…

That's based on my years of experience in the information security industry. Trust me, if Intuit and H&R Block were being breached, I would know about it. And more than likely, so would you.

But your comment about identity theft, that's part of the "file it before someone else does" aspect. Not necessarily that Intuit is getting broken into, but the rampant identity theft that seems to be common and even acceptable in today's day and age is making it a lot easier to file someone else's taxes for them and then make off with the money. And hackers will always go for the easiest target.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#187

Post by unclebucknasty »

Reminds me that raw capitalism isn't the answer to every problem.

Kind of like the current healthcare debate in the U.S., where the problem seems to be "how do we allow insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. to make maximum profits while providing healthcare for the maximim number of people at minimum cost?"

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#188

Post by baursak »

lettergram wrote: post #122
cmurf wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, the free market has produced a pile of jobs that we don't really need? Lobbyists get paid money to get politicians to supply a deduction as a line item on some obscure form, which increases red tape, which requires a need for a free market service, the revenue from that service in turn goes to feed more lobbying for more red tape. This is basically collusion, using the worst aspects of the free mar…

> So in other words, the free market has produced a pile of jobs that we don't really need? Our current system is the opposite of a free market. You can think of paying your monthly rent payment, your banking, etc. as (mostly) free market. You can think of taxes, DMV, healthcare, etc. as not free market.

Housing is very far from free market, from zoning regulations to building codes to property taxes and school districts to rental regulations. Banking is also pretty much the opposite of it, from the Federal Reserve dependency to Fannie and Freddie loan guarantees.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#189

Post by rmah »

bluejekyll wrote: post #178
sokoloff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're still stuck on W-2 employees (which is a pretty large and common case, I admit, and I'd love to see that simplified). You will always need accounting for businesses (IMO). Suppose you ran a lemonade stand. You bought some equipment, some raw materials, you used some utilities, you used some space, you bought a banner and some flyers to advertise your stand, you hired a lawyer to help set it up, you bou…

Sure. Let's focus on the individual return first. In terms of businesses, I hold somewhat controversial belief that businesses should not be taxed. Their employees are taxed, and people recieving dividends are taxed. By not taxing businesses, we'd also balance out the unfairness in the system today, where large companies are able to offset all profits with deductions, and small companies which actually pay quite a bi…

That would only be reasonable if you think that only poor and middle-income people should pay taxes. Everyone else would be able to opt out via a series of corporate shells.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

#190

Post by stephen_g »

xupybd wrote: post #97

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…

Yep, same for Australia - taxes are withheld automatically from your pay and then at the end of the year, you put and extra income and your deductions into the free web app that the tax office provides. I don't think I've ever spent more than an hour filing my return.
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