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Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
541–550 of 717 posts
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
If complicated taxes are a Republican anti-tax strategy, why did Reagan and the 1980s republicans pursue a strategy of vastly simplifying the tax code? Doing taxes is a tax -- in hours and fees. Only the wealthiest people who can spend $10K on tax prep to save $100K via loophole deductions, oh.
Forget Reagan, they claimed they were trying to do it last year. Remember the post card?
By cutting the ability to deduct SALT they made tens of millions of people who would have otherwise itemized do a simple 1040. While not a postcard it did greatly simplify taxes for many people.
That said, most of those people are still going to see it as a travesty because they had to pay a little more (god forbid people rich enough to have thousands of dollars of SALT pay taxes on the income used to pay that SALT).
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How do you differentiate deductions from loopholes?
Easy. Any deduction you don't use is a loophole, legislative compromise of yesteryear or not.
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always thought it would be better to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. Then, for those who earn less and have to spend a greater proportion of their income on essential expenses, the government would credit them through their employer's paycheck (essentially the opposite of what federal withholding is now). For those who earn more, they would receive less credit or won't receive any credit.
Wouldn't that make the lower class the only ones that had to file anything at all (for the tax credit), put temporary financial strain in place when waiting for credit for purchases and actually make the IRS more complicated and onerous for most Americans? I get the attempt to sidestep the regressive counterarguments normally in play with sales tax replacement systems, but I think this system would be equally regress…
> Wouldn't that make the lower class the only ones that had to file anything at all (for the tax credit
They shouldn't have to do anything more than file a W4 whenever they start a new job or their income statutes changes. That's certainly less burdensome than even just the 1040 form now.
> put temporary financial strain in place when waiting for credit for purchases
What I proposed would be a credit that would be applied to every paycheck, much like the withholding we currently have applied to every paycheck. So the wait for credit wouldn't be ant longer than it currently is before the next payday (assuming they're living from paycheck to paycheck).
> and actually make the IRS more complicated and onerous for most Americans?
Having this credit calculated based on the reported earnings on the W-2 form and filing a W4 is certainly less complex than just filing the 1040 form. Plus, most people wouldn't have to worry come later this month if they haven't had enough withheld from their paychecks in the last year.
> but I think this system would be equally regressive.
If people with less income are getting a credit on every paycheck and they spend less overall compared to people who earn more and get less or no credit on their paychecks, then why do you believe that the proposed system would be equally regressive?
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#545NPR'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.
Why not pirate it.
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#546Planet 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 actual…
I don't understand what anyone would gain from this. Citizens would be more cash-rich throughout the year, then cash-poor when tax time came. Over the years, people would learn to squirrel away similar amounts to what they're withholding now. Withholdings exist now as a forced savings plan for the poor and a free loan system for the .gov for the upper class.
> My bet is that within the first year of this taxes would be massively reduced.
Making the filing and paying of taxes difficult and painful won't change a person's tax liability, it'll just irritate every citizen until we collectively demand an easier process. If you can't pay, you get penalties and a payment plan. Don't forget that the IRS is a government entity capable of legally charging, suing, etc. with the force of law. Why would having to travel to a payment center reduce someone's tax liability?
I guess I want to know more of the argument, for the sake of argument, because the argument doesn't make sense to me as presented.
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 remember that detail, but the e-filing service you used last year never forgot and they'll gladly auto-fill that block for you as a repeat customer.
I was not asked for such a thing, and used a different preparer this year. I was asked to set a PIN for 2018, but I have never had to use a PIN I previously set. I have always been asked for the prior year's AGI for verification. What software asked you for a prior year's PIN to file this year?
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#548To me (as a Dutchman) this sounds crazy. Here in Holland the only way to file your taxes as in individual (I don't know about company's) is to login to the government tax website (with my digid (a government issued digital identity)) and then to simply check if all the information that they have collected on me is correct. It usualy is. All I have to add is my deduction items, and BAM! it's done. Also, we automatical…
I find the Dutch way (slightly) crazy, as someone from NZ for the most part, you just don't file taxes and it works out. If you have a more complicated situation you might need to, but otherwise there's no point. Everything is withheld correctly.
At least the Dutch ones tend to just be click-click-check-done, so it's not too bad. But it was sad moving to filing annual tax returns from a much simpler system.
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always thought it would be better to replace the income tax with a national sales tax. Then, for those who earn less and have to spend a greater proportion of their income on essential expenses, the government would credit them through their employer's paycheck (essentially the opposite of what federal withholding is now). For those who earn more, they would receive less credit or won't receive any credit.
What's the benefit compared to what we have now?
Basically, we wouldn't have to go through the process of filing taxes every year, and we wouldn't have to worry about the potential bill and penalties if we didn't have enough money withheld from our paychecks in the last year.
Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use taxhawk.com and would absolutely recommend it, I think the UI is fantastic (and without a fantastic UI, I'd just continue to do taxes with paper and pen). I've been using it since 2011. I have heard good things about freetaxusa.com as well. Both are very reasonably priced, only $15 for state - federal is free. Since I have business income TurboTax wants over $100 to do my taxes.
Thank you, you just saved me $164.98 (turbotax self-employed) - $14.99 (taxhawk)! A lot of money given that it's for my kid's $620 income :) And honestly, the taxhawk experience was better, with less cutesy messages and fewer screens. Not to mention the annoying turbotax upsells. Just one thing to complain - it didn't discover that I over-contributed to Roth and need to return a bit to prevent a penalty.
Yay! Glad I could help! Doing taxes in subsequent years is where it really shines, it remembers your previous year stuff so it goes much faster. It also shows you a side-by-side summary of this year vs last year which I find really helpful.
Perhaps you can let them know about the IRA thing for next year?