241–250 of 283 posts
However it's not true. You can file via TurboTax without paying. Then directly go to the 3-4 IRS authorized payment providers who will let you pay via card for less.
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The fact that we still tax capital gains way lower than personal income should already tell you volumes about who has special privileges in the tax code.
There are a lot of very good reasons to tax capital gains at lower rates than ordinary income. Among them: - The problem of notational vs real gains - The fact that capital gains are already taxed once at the corporate level - The fact that taxing capital gains is a tax on savings and we want to encourage savings and investment - All of the theory on how differentiated taxes on present vs future consumption is a flaw…
Especially since there are countries that do tax at least some capital gains at the same rate, and they don't seem to be doing appreciably worse than other countries in a similar economic bucket that do not. Indeed, it seems to be more popular among economically liberal countries with flat income taxes.
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> Because corporations are just groups of people operating as one legal entity A corporate entity has rights and powers that ordinary people do not, so they are more than "just groups of people". They are independent entities all their own. Further, they can only exist because the government grants them that privilege, and the government can technically place any restrictions they like on them. In the past, the gover…
Curious as to what extra rights you believe they have?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of very good reasons to tax capital gains at lower rates than ordinary income. Among them: - The problem of notational vs real gains - The fact that capital gains are already taxed once at the corporate level - The fact that taxing capital gains is a tax on savings and we want to encourage savings and investment - All of the theory on how differentiated taxes on present vs future consumption is a flaw…
These are all very good reasons, but in practice it mainly means that the richer you are, the less you pay in taxes as proportion of your overall income, and there's a point past which taxation is essentially regressive as a result. So any such argument has to demonstrate that the obvious disparity that already exists in that arrangement is less of a problem than any of the hypothetical problems from taxing capital g…
Perhaps, but the US is not past that point. Every level of income pays a higher rate of taxes than the level below it according to IRS reports.
Separately, none of the issues I listed are hypothetical.
For us Canadians out there too, SimpleTax[0] is complexity free as well! Super simple design, easy to file. We've used it for a while. [0]: https://simpletax.ca/
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I've looked at that section on the IRS site every other year for twenty, still can't make heads or tails of it. I end up opening another tab and downloading 1040.
It's not much different than logging into any other tax website provider, except that it's less slick and nice, and you have to actually fill out the forms rather than answering questions. This is the actual direct link to the site in case you actually haven't been able to find what you're supposed to use: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
In my experience this year, TurboTax prompted me that I could save money by upgrading to a paid plan via taking advantage of some extra deduction. I thought, "if it's going to save me more than I pay for it, why not?" I clicked through and found that this deduction wouldn't actually save me any money. I then couldn't find a way to get back to the free plan (they only charge you after you file, so this should be possi…
TaxAct has one dark pattern where they slide in a question in the middle where they basically ask your consent for marketing stuff to you. It's confusingly worded in a way to make it sound like you'll unlock additional savings. But the good part is you can decline that, and the rest of the time they stick to the task at hand. Now they do have separate pricing tiers based on your needs but I don't find that dishonest.…
In my experience this year, TurboTax prompted me that I could save money by upgrading to a paid plan via taking advantage of some extra deduction. I thought, "if it's going to save me more than I pay for it, why not?" I clicked through and found that this deduction wouldn't actually save me any money. I then couldn't find a way to get back to the free plan (they only charge you after you file, so this should be possi…
I couldn’t import shit from many things anyway so last couple of years I’ve just used excel and the fillable PDFs.