381–390 of 717 posts
Disappointed by the overwhelmingly negative commentary here. There are multiple private companies providing this service for low amount, as many have mentioned; for free for incomes below a threshold. 1) Why would you want the IRS to duplicate this effort and compete with these companies? Remember 'Free' in this context means paid for by tax dollars. Do you think the IRS is going to spend less to implement a filing s…
Disappointed by the overwhelmingly negative commentary here. There are multiple private companies providing this service for low amount, as many have mentioned; for free for incomes below a threshold. 1) Why would you want the IRS to duplicate this effort and compete with these companies? Remember 'Free' in this context means paid for by tax dollars. Do you think the IRS is going to spend less to implement a filing s…
1) They could still provide free federal tax submissions 2) State taxes could still be submitted through the companies
If the companies do in fact provide a service that is valuable the IRS should not be competition for them.
Now with that said. Intuit loads up their service with tons of dark patterns, and they spend money lobbying... why would they be doing that if they provide a valuable service?
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I'm sure it's just coincidental that senators and their family/friends frequently get lucrative positions on the boards of various companies, investment sweeteners, and actual positions in these companies for family. For example Joe Biden, a leading Democrat, has been in bed with the credit card industry for most of his career and supported/written legislation in their interest. MBNA was one of his biggest donors and…
There's no coincidence about the revolving door and corporate nepotism. But it's not as simple as I give you money, you employ my kid. I kind of wish it were because that would be much easier to do something about. Those things are just the long term effects of paying for access. The frequent close work between lobbyists, politicians and career servants lead to friendships and strong network effects. I'm not defendin…
Part of the reason it's cheap is because most of the time the politicians in question likely tell themselves they're not being bought, because they're taking donations for access etc. or other things that are sufficiently separate from a direct transfer of money that they too are pricing it based on access rather than on the value of a changed vote, as you suggest.
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Yes, you're right that people in that camp are unlikely to review their tax filings from their 3rd party. However there is an incentive for that 3rd part tax company to save their customer as much as they possibly can. The bigger the refund, the happier the customer and the more likely they are to come back next year and give you more money. In the Planet Money episode they spoke with the Republican dude and his bigg…
> The bigger the refund, the happier the customer and the more likely they are to come back next year and give you more money. Doubt it. We're talking 1040EZ filings by people in the 22% and lower tax brackets, not complex itemizations typical of 24%+ tax bracket filers. The 5-digit PIN from the previous year's e-filing that's required if you want to expediently e-file this year is enough. Most people aren't going to…
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> No one is evil stuff just breaks. Are you implying here that the problem can't be fixed or ameliorated? > buying a $10,000 plate at this donor dinner gets you a sit down with the Senator What if there were no donor dinners because campaigns were limited to a set amount of public funds?
>> No one is evil stuff just breaks. >Are you implying here that the problem can't be fixed or ameliorated? I sure hope we can find a way to fix it. >> buying a $10,000 plate at this donor dinner gets you a sit down with the Senator >What if there were no donor dinners because campaigns were limited to a set amount of public funds? I think that would be a pretty good start. Enough so that I spent several years workin…
Disappointed by the overwhelmingly negative commentary here. There are multiple private companies providing this service for low amount, as many have mentioned; for free for incomes below a threshold. 1) Why would you want the IRS to duplicate this effort and compete with these companies? Remember 'Free' in this context means paid for by tax dollars. Do you think the IRS is going to spend less to implement a filing s…
The IRS should really just prepare everyone's tax return for free automatically using your submitted documents, then provide you the opportunity to approve or correct your filing. This would save everyone a huge amount of money and time (aka money). It would be a, you know, "public service", the thing governments are supposed to do.
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Yes, you're right that people in that camp are unlikely to review their tax filings from their 3rd party. However there is an incentive for that 3rd part tax company to save their customer as much as they possibly can. The bigger the refund, the happier the customer and the more likely they are to come back next year and give you more money. In the Planet Money episode they spoke with the Republican dude and his bigg…
If republicans wanted to make a system where people would save the most money we'd just reduce the tax loopholes and simplify the system - the system we have now actually only has the wealthy pay the least money. Some would say the republicans think this is a feature.
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There's no coincidence about the revolving door and corporate nepotism. But it's not as simple as I give you money, you employ my kid. I kind of wish it were because that would be much easier to do something about. Those things are just the long term effects of paying for access. The frequent close work between lobbyists, politicians and career servants lead to friendships and strong network effects. I'm not defendin…
Another way to think about it is that if people were actually straight up buying votes on a regular basis the prices would likely be much higher. If politicians were admitting to themselves they were selling their vote, a large proportion of them would likely think about the value their vote have in a particular setting and price it accordingly. Part of the reason it's cheap is because most of the time the politician…
And as I said earlier, the campaign contributions are window dressing for the rest of it and I gave a concrete example. Families like the Clintons have made massive amounts of money cashing out after office, and secured lucrative sinecures for their daughter while in it.
These people and their families are insanely well off as a result of their work in government, and its not because they legislated or governed in the public interest.
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Interesting in theory but in practice most Americans do not have the financial literacy to budget properly to meet taxes. What happens when you don't have the cash to pay? Do we then see a whole new sector of predatory loans? Imprisonment? Increasing unpayable fines? None of those are good ideas, yet when things like this happen, our system has already fallen into these pitfalls. Witholding is an essential idea. What…
This is actually how things were done pre WW2. If people were able to budget for it then, why not now? The current system makes filing taxes and getting refunded seem like a reward, it should probably be a bit painful to do your taxes. Without the painful transparency, it becomes too easy for the government to nearly invisibly turn up the tax rate on individuals to pay for whatever boondoggle or foreign war they see…
A failing public education system and increasingly consumerist culture that encourages bad spending habits using psychological advertising tricks, to start. Go look at how little savings Americans have currently as well, which has been covered ad nauseam by most news outlets in the past few years.
> Without the painful transparency, it becomes too easy for the government to nearly invisibly turn up the tax rate on individuals to pay for whatever boondoggle or foreign war they see fit.
Given that it directly affects take-home pay, any significant change is pretty noticeable. Heck, even Trump's very small changes for the middle class were noticed on paychecks slightly, though there was also an unequal decrease in witholding that made people's refunds smaller.
The government shoots themselves in the foot? Can anyone explain given the unbelievably bad record of government, why they would ever want more of it?
There is the same sort of corruption and inefficiency in a corporation as well.