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Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

propublica.org

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Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#21

Post by tvanantwerp »

komali2 wrote: post #10
cascom wrote: post #7

What propublica left out: To be clear the Intuit’s of the world are not acting altruistically, however they’ve created an odd alliance with anti-tax advocates who 1. Think that any government provided system will favor the government over tax-payers and make it easier to sneak in stealth tax changes and 2. The anti-tax lobby cynically (and correctly) understands that in order to keep taxes unpopular, making them pain…

>sneak in stealth tax changes I don't think we exist in a world where this is possible.

I can imagine it happening. The US tax code is so complicated that most tax payers don't really understand it. Heck, most tax payers don't understand how marginal tax rates work or why having a large refund isn't actually a good thing. I can absolutely believe that a majority of people would accept a negative change to the tax code due to an inability to understand it, choosing to just accept whatever they're being told to make it all go away until next year.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#22

Post by lotsofpulp »

danso wrote: post #19
komali2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very confused - last night I filed my taxes in an hour flat on freefillableforms or whatever that terribly named piece of software is. I thought this was a service provided by the IRS?

I think freefillableforms.com -- maintained by the Free File Alliance -- is an example of what the article complains about: > The Free File Alliance, a private industry group, says 70% of American taxpayers are eligible to file for free. Those taxpayers, who must make less than $66,000, have access to free tax software provided by the companies. But just 3% of eligible U.S. taxpayers actually use the free program eac…

Free File Fillable Forms are pretty easy to use for anyone, regardless of income. It doesn't hold your hand and walk you through it, but assuming you can read English at a 4th grade level, I feel like you should be able to do it. Not that I think it should be even this complicated to do taxes, but it's not a terrible option.

https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#23

Post by alkonaut »

I just filed my taxes in 10 seconds using the tax authority's smartphone app. It had pre-filled all my deductions such as interest using info reported from my employer and banks.

Apart from bribes from those who make tax software (which should be pretty easy to expose) I can't understand why congress wouldn't want to make paying taxes simple and efficient?

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#24

Post by acjohnson55 »

perfmode wrote: post #17
nemo44x wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the $150 is worth it to these people over using their agency to google how they could file for free.

We can’t assume rational agents.

Or perfect information. Or infinite time to acquire information.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#25

Post by fsloth »

Oh man, I've had government provided automatic filings for ages now (Finland). US is really odd how it emphasizes the benefit of the middleman over the benefit of the individual citizen (it seems). Or have I completely misunderstood what's going on here?

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#26

Post by 0xfeba »

What's preventing a OSS solution to this? What I can think of off the top of my head:

* Lack of e-file permission

* Lack of any kind of legal recourse or audit protection for the user

* Constantly changing tax system

After a casual search on GitHub I see a few calculator projects but nothing serious.

I'd be down to help make a free competitor to Intuit. I see no reason to use a non-static site unless it's to keep previous years data, but that's iffy and sounds like it requires a whole other legal consideration.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#28

Post by deckar01 »

javagram wrote: post #16

> The Free File Alliance, a private industry group, says 70% of American taxpayers are eligible to file for free. Those taxpayers, who must make less than $66,000, have access to free tax software provided by the companies. But just 3% of eligible U.S. taxpayers actually use the free program each year. Critics of the program say that companies use it as a cross-marketing tool to upsell paid products, that they have d…

This statistic is misleading. Throughout the filing process consumers are bombarded with opportunities to upgrade to a paid tier. They make paying more the default option and demote the controls to continue using the free version to have secondary or cancel-like styling. I had to constantly back out and go back to the free version, because I accidentally opted into a paid tier.

Another reason might be that "automatically" filling in your details from uploaded / linked documents is often a paid feature. I uploaded a doc it asked for, it showed me the info, then when I opted for the free tier it cleared the data and made me type it in myself.

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