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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)

#241

Post by bluejekyll »

sokoloff wrote: post #192
bluejekyll wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know that I agree with the fairness points you raised, but from a sensibility standpoint, I like the idea. Corporate income tax is only 9% of total federal receipts, so it seems like we could make that up without incredibly burdensome changes. It would also make the US competitive again as a corporate domicile for multi-nationals (though without taxing them, it's not clear how advantageous that would be). I d…

Yes, I think there is an enforcement and compliance problem. I think that gets into some serious details about a plan that would actually work. Perhaps extremely steep penalties for anyone caught cheating would be enough, but you are right that people would try to hide their revenue in the corporation. But aren't the extremely rich already doing that?

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

#242

Post by smsm42 »

scurvy wrote: post #107
smsm42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It basically says women make no money Could you explain this? I don't see where MFJ assumes women make no money. > if you're a dual income bunch of shmucks, that your wife must make 80% Also don't see how it means that. Could you explain your argument in a bit more detail?

Sure. When the federal income tax was instituted in 1913, all of the tax rates were individual (and the lowest bracket covered most Americans). People who were married could lump sum their income and divide by 2 to find the correct rate. Married filing jointly back then was just a way to save on paperwork and hassle. Lump the two incomes together, divide by two, and treat the two people equally. That was it. In 1948,…

> One would think that the married filing jointly tax rates would simply be double what the individual rates were, right?

Certainly not, why would I expect that? That's mean that if there's a family of two paying individual rates, they pay X% of the income, but if they file MFJ, they pay 2X% of the same income, or twice as much. How would it make sense?

> The joint rates were about 1.8x the individual rates.

Do you mean the tax brackets and not rates?

> Someone was 100%, someone was 80%.

That is a weird conclusion - why not each one 90%, or one 110% and one 80%, or one 180% and one 0%? Having MFJ rate does not imply any distribution of income, not that I can see it at least.

> This being 1948, the woman in the dual income family was 80%

What you mean "was"? Do you mean average married woman's income was 80% of average man's income in 1948? Maybe (I have no idea, didn't check) but what this has to do with tax rates? If it was so, it was certainly not because of the tax rates.

> Married filing jointly is silly

No it's not. The fact is our society is organized around families. It's not everybody, but mostly that is how it works (and MFJ is optional of course, so if you don't like the model, you can stay away from it). Taxing family - or household - as one unit makes a lot of sense, because that's how the actual households commonly work, the income and the expenses are shared. Just as taxing a company as a unit makes sense, instead of taxing each employee's production individually, so does it make sense for a household.

> It should be a sum of the family income, divided by two, then mapped to the individual rates.

That's another question. Maybe specific tax brackets need to be adjusted, maybe not - at least this link suggests that MFJ has actually lower brackets (and thus higher taxes) than two individual incomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_penalty

But: all that explanation failed to show where does it say "women make no money". It is true that in 1948 a lot of women did not make any money as employees, and instead were providing services to their families which weren't remunerated monetarily, but I see how having (optionally) the household as taxpaying unit implies "women make no money". It still makes no sense to me.

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

#243

Post by toomuchtodo »

krisroadruck wrote: post #218
rayiner wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone oppose a simple system like this? Because you want to make people angry and upset at least once a year at the government? Because you want to remind people that taxes are something the government takes, instead of letting them think of taxes as money they never earned to begin with. I love paying my taxes, but if you think taxes are bad (and lots of people do), then the current U.S. system makes to…

You... love paying taxes?

I do. With them, I buy civilization.

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

#244

Post by smsm42 »

joering2 wrote: post #146
smsm42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Majority of work will be done automatically by some free jQuery and PHP scripts (hello Obamacare website) Obamacare website was notorious for being completely terrible. And so were many other government-run healthcare sites - I personally tried to find some info on CA site when it was launched and failed for several days until they worked out the kinks. And tax code is vastly more complex than what healthcare needs…

> Quite a lot of it. E.g. my charity donations aren't. I think you missed the point. IRS will know about your charity donation shall you decide to give this information to TurboTax for TT to lower your tax burden. IF you don't want to lower your burden, don't give it to TT and don't give it to IRS, problem solved. So at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you provide something to TurboTax and they forward to IRS,…

> So at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you provide something to TurboTax and they forward to IRS, or IRS will have it directly from you by adding this information to your online tax form on Gov site.

Ah, in this scenario it indeed wouldn't matter - but this scenario means that there's a government-run clone of TurboTax. I doubt the government will do better job and be cheaper than Intuit, which have a lot of experience and knowledge in doing this.

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

#245

Post by averagewall »

wbl wrote: post #239
ransom1538 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that bad in the US using turbo tax. Just remember to answer no to receiving payments from the "Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement". (Actual question).

Why should I have to pay $100 to file my taxes?

A counter viewpoint - maybe the system has to be complicated to provide all the various incentives that voters want taxes to do, and to patch all the loopholes that would otherwise be open. Maybe such a system is too complicated for a lay person to understand so they delegate the understanding to private enterprises which can compete to provide the cheapest or easiest interface to the complicated system. If it wasn't the taxpayers paying for the complexity directly, it would be the government which would charge everyone via those same taxes to implement their own clunky government computer system that people would hate even more.

Countries with simple tax rules don't get to micromanage their economy so much.

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

#246

Post by School-Cotton »

dredmorbius wrote: post #89
joering2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same old same old: show me a doctor who doesn't want you to be sick. Show me a lawyer who doesn't want you to get in trouble with law. Show me a priest who doesn't want you to sin. It just blows my mind up to what degree TurboTax will go with this!

Chinese system: pay doctor only when you're well. Allign incentives.

Bullshit, I have been to a public Chinese hospital and all I got before paying was a tech hooking me up to an EKG to verify I wasn't actively having a heart attack.

Before I could see a doctor, I had to pay cash. I had to pay again to do the blood tests ordered by the doctor.

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

#247

Post by M_Grey »

chasing wrote: post #234
krisroadruck wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You... love paying taxes?

Yes. I love paying taxes. Not because I like having less money in my bank account, but because I understand what paying taxes represents.

Yeah, a couple of wars for one thing, but not fixing dams, that's for sure.

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

#248

Post by School-Cotton »

mhalle wrote: post #208
ticviking wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be confusing, gratis, and Taxpayer-funded.

The IRS is already essentially doing your taxes already (certainly for the most common and straightforward returns): they have to verify your statement. The actual computation is trivial (for them). "Doing your taxes" mostly involves showing you their calculations. It's almost a freedom of information issue. Compared to the cost of private prep and filing, it basically does seem free (gratis). And even if you choose…

The IRS mostly just trusts what you tell them for a lot of stuff (like charitable donation amounts). This is why audits are a thing.

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

#249

Post by thewhitetulip »

I am in India and tax filing here is as simple as 1 2 3. We have the Form16, which has the data to be entered in an excel sheet that you can download from the govt website, punch in the numbers and voilà, they tell you tax you owe! Pay via net banking and you are done.
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