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

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

#521

Post by jason_slack »

wycy wrote: post #515
jason_slack wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you are coming from. What if I have a baby in January or February? Then I would qualify for a deduction and then I am indeed overpaying them. What if I lose my job? or get a job that is less money? It's not their money unless I earn the money to pay them, IMHO. It should go both ways.....why can't I ask them to estimate a refund then and give it to me in advance?

> why can't I ask them to estimate a refund then and give it to me in advance? You sort of can, by adjusting your withholding.

true, I could with hold like Married, 9, lol.

But then if I did that and at year end didn't have enough taken I would still face a penalty.

It feels like taxpayers just have to take it.

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

#522

Post by edraferi »

jason_slack wrote: post #506

I just filed my taxes this morning. I owe the government $4,600. I received an "underpayment penalty fee of $44" because I did not "pre-pay an estimated tax" each quarter. Something I have never done in the ~25 years I have been paying taxes. Not only do they want the $4,600 by 4/15 they also want an estimated $1,200 "pre-payment" for 2019 by the same date or I will incur this same fee of $44 next year.Plus 3 more pa…

Not your fault. The Republican tax law of 2017 changed how your existing withholding instructions were interpreted, decreasing your withholding more than necessary in order to artificially inflate the perceived benefit of the new law. Now you’re paying for it.

The really annoying thing is that I agree it’s a good thing to have more accurate withholding and smaller refunds. They just screwed it up for political reasons.

All this could have been avoided if they just required employers to get updated W4s instead of defaulting to misinterpreting your existing instructions.

Recommend you submit a new W4 ASAP.

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

#523

Post by JTbane »

There should be an API for taxes, in which your employer, banks, or yourself can report income and recieve an exact tax amount to be paid quarterly.

Most deductions and credits should also be done away with to simplify the tax code, but I doubt the Intuit lobbyists would let that happen.

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

#524

Post by dhimes »

jason_slack wrote: post #506

I just filed my taxes this morning. I owe the government $4,600. I received an "underpayment penalty fee of $44" because I did not "pre-pay an estimated tax" each quarter. Something I have never done in the ~25 years I have been paying taxes. Not only do they want the $4,600 by 4/15 they also want an estimated $1,200 "pre-payment" for 2019 by the same date or I will incur this same fee of $44 next year.Plus 3 more pa…

Yep. We got hit with an enormous bill we didn't see coming either. The new tax law crushed us.

But strictly speaking, they don't see it as holding your money, they see it as your money is due when you earn it and if you are witholding "too much" from your paycheck then you are holding their money.

We have got to pass a law saying all lobbying must be done with full transparency- no secret meetings, etc. We have got to limit the access that megabuck gives to our politicians. It's getting insane.

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

#525

Post by dgacmu »

rayiner wrote: post #277
dgacmu wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big donors are a high return-on-time for busy politicians. I donated the max (2*$2700) to a few candidates during the previous midterm elections, and was (naively) surprised to be invited to have brief 1:1 meetings with each of them. Money speaks depressingly loudly in politics. Corporations have to go through PACs, but many have their own (Intuit has their "21st Century Leadership Fund" PAC, which you can view here:…

> Money speaks depressingly loudly in politics. I don't know what's disheartening about it. Here in D.C., Democrats are in an ideological war with Republicans. Money is necessary to fuel the war machine: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015... . Of course they want to get larger donors more involved.

Its disheartening in the same way that many other oligarchic trends in the US are: it creates an easy pathway for those with money to ensure that they retain an (unfair) advantage, even when it comes at the cost of something that would save millions of hours of aggragate work and unnecessary expense.

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

#527

Post by ecopoesis »

jacobolus wrote: post #336
Calloggs wrote: post #298

Planet Money covered tax filing a few years ago and visited it again recently: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... My understanding is that the main opposition appears to be (1) the tax preparation lobby to protect their business interests and (2) anti-tax activists that believe that making people calculate their own taxes will make them more aware of how much they are paying in taxes. The…

It’s not really about making people more or less aware of what they are paying. The point is to make filing taxes as time consuming and obnoxious (and therefore emotionally painful) as possible, ideally without the public connecting the dots and getting outraged.

The point is to enrich Intuit and other tax preparers that lobbied for this.

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

#528

Post by cobbzilla »

freedomben wrote: post #392
cobbzilla wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just playing devil’s advocate: What if a fixed/low salary only attracts the already-rich whose interests will never be well aligned with the general public? If you want superstar government that is the very best at what it is supposed to do, you need a superstar salary structure, something more like professional athletics. Our president should be paid millions (with complex incentive structures for measurable achieve…

Our presidents are alreay paid millions, typically billions. They just don't get it until after they leave office. Just look at the Obama's net worth. And of course Bill & Hillary pulling down 6 figures for giving a speech (that somebody else writes for them). I'd say they are paid pretty well already

Pay received after leaving office cannot by definition incentivize any behavior during the term.

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

#529

Post by RayVR »

Calloggs wrote: post #298

Planet Money covered tax filing a few years ago and visited it again recently: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... My understanding is that the main opposition appears to be (1) the tax preparation lobby to protect their business interests and (2) anti-tax activists that believe that making people calculate their own taxes will make them more aware of how much they are paying in taxes. The…

The second argument is about raising all relevant barriers to submitting your tax return. If I were in this camp I’d be pushing for everyone to have zero withholding and carry cash to a tax filing center. Ideally, there would be very few tax filing centers so you would need to travel far and wait in line. My bet is that within the first year of this taxes would be massively reduced. Also, very few people would actually be able to pay the government.

Again, this is just for the sake of argument.

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

#530

Post by hannasanarion »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #106
ddlatham wrote: post #56

NPR's Planet Money just re-ran an episode[1] related to this. In 2005, California ran a pilot program where they sent simple, pre-filled tax forms[2] to a sample of the population. 98% of people liked them and would use them again. In 2006 it would have become standard for California, but failed in the legislature by a single vote. Opposition was from two factions: lobbying by Intuit, and Grover Norquist claiming tha…

I will say, vote with your dollars. If you don't like Intuit's lobbying, please don't feed the beast and use their services.

Conservatives always love when people say "vote with your dollars", because that means the people with more dollars get more votes.
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