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TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

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Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#271

Post by pubutil »

untog wrote: post #11

They're not perfect, but I've had success filing with FreeTaxUSA - federal is free, state is $15: https://www.freetaxusa.com/ Obviously too late for people this year, and my tax situation is relatively straightforward so I can't speak to how well it handles edge cases, but the first year I used it I went through the process with both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and got the exact same estimated refund. The last straw with…

I definitely recommend FreeTaxUSA. I work 1099, and my tax burden was a not-insignificant amount (to me) this year. I went through TurboTax, CreditKarma, and FTUSA’s processes and found:

-Of the three options, TurboTax returned the highest amount owed to federal and state govt

-CreditKarma and FTUSA’s federal totals owed were ~$2k less than TT, and a few hundred $ less owed for state

-FTUSA was the least expensive option of the three, at ~$80 less owed than CreditKarma

I’m not sure why the totals were different, but it was absolutely worth it to go through the process three times. Especially to not support Intuit’s lobbying practices.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#272

Post by int_19h »

harryh wrote: post #263
int_19h wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every level of income pays a higher rate of taxes than the level below it according to IRS reports Does their definition of "income" include capital gains for the purpose of those reports? I don't see how this could possibly be true if it does, given that capital gains constitute the largest part of overall income past a certain point on the scale.

Does their definition of "income" include capital gains for the purpose of those reports? Yes https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...

It doesn't show up in their data, because they cut off at 0.1% - the hump is slightly higher than that. This shows where it was as of 2014.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/how-capital-gains-aff...

I'm not sure where it is today, exactly. But it's easy to see that it's always going to be there, simply by virtue of increasing proportion of capital gains at higher income levels.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#273

Post by MandieD »

geomark wrote: post #266
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Free Tax USA this year, and it ended up giving me the same number Turbo Tax did (since you can do Turbo Tax for free until the end). My taxes include a multitude of stock sales, losses (from calls and puts), as well as my W2. It takes a little longer to fill out then Turbo Tax due to the lack of integrations with banks and what not, but I still finished the whole thing in less than an hour. It's free for Feder…

Does Free Tax USA handle US expats who don't have a US mailing address? Some years ago TuboTax did not support electronic filing so I was forced to print out the tax return and send it via a third world postal service. Not a good feeling.

No, they don't - I just tried it.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#274

Post by omilu »

untog wrote: post #11

They're not perfect, but I've had success filing with FreeTaxUSA - federal is free, state is $15: https://www.freetaxusa.com/ Obviously too late for people this year, and my tax situation is relatively straightforward so I can't speak to how well it handles edge cases, but the first year I used it I went through the process with both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and got the exact same estimated refund. The last straw with…

not to defend turbo tax but you can download the tax return as a pdf when you file.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#275

Post by omilu »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #55
untog wrote: post #11

They're not perfect, but I've had success filing with FreeTaxUSA - federal is free, state is $15: https://www.freetaxusa.com/ Obviously too late for people this year, and my tax situation is relatively straightforward so I can't speak to how well it handles edge cases, but the first year I used it I went through the process with both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA and got the exact same estimated refund. The last straw with…

I was seriously considering running ads for FreeTaxUSA out of disgust for TurboTax, it is sad that information flows so slowly through the world :/

been using turbo tax forever, no more!

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#276

Post by asimpletune »

sinatra wrote: post #164
asimpletune wrote: post #30

Credit Karma does a good job providing free federal and state tax filing. Disclaimer: I work there but not on tax

If you work there, maybe you can pass this along to the right people: I tried creating an account for filing taxes, CK told me my SSN needed to be unfrozen (that shouldn't matter for tax filing purposes), I temporarily unfroze my SSN and kept retrying to create my account on CK. For the next two days, it kept telling me my SSN was frozen. Then, I gave up!

I’ll definitely pass that along. Thanks for taking the time to share.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#277

Post by MagicPropmaker »

JohnFen wrote: post #207
notriddle wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Likely to cheat" usually means something like "the probability of a person cheating is higher," meaning it would be based on the number of incidents, not on the amount of money. If the poster has meant the amount, they might have said "Lower income people with cash businesses cheat more than wealthy people" (which is ambiguous) or "The IRS loses more money to low income cheaters with cash businesses" (which is unamb…

Yes, your interpretation is likely the correct one. In terms of societal impact, I don't think it's the important one.

Maybe it is the important one. There's a culture of cheating among many lower-income self-employed workers, and they feel they're "entitled" to it.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#278

Post by MagicPropmaker »

JohnFen wrote: post #129
MagicPropmaker wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower income people with cash business are far more likely to cheat than wealthy people. (Of course the return for the IRS going after the small player may not be worth it.)

> Lower income people with cash business are far more likely to cheat than wealthy people. The statistics I've seen indicate the opposite. But I suppose it depends on how you measure. Perhaps on a per-incident basis, you may be correct. But I don't think you're correct if you measure by the amount of money.

That's exactly why I said "(Of course the return for the IRS going after the small player may not be worth it.)"

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#279

Post by JohnFen »

MagicPropmaker wrote: post #277
JohnFen wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, your interpretation is likely the correct one. In terms of societal impact, I don't think it's the important one.

Maybe it is the important one. There's a culture of cheating among many lower-income self-employed workers, and they feel they're "entitled" to it.

That may depend on what your goals are. To put myself in the IRS' shoes, their goal is to minimize the amount of revenue lost due to fraud. In that view, the important thing to do is to go after the people who are cheating them out of the most money.

If the goal is culture change, that may be different -- but the IRS is probably the wrong entity to address it.

I will say that I have not noticed that lower-income people have any greater sense of "cheating is OK" than higher-income people. My observations are not necessarily representative of the wider culture, but it looks to me like the percentage of people who think cheating is OK doesn't change based on income.

Re: TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

#280

Post by behringer »

mdorazio wrote: post #215
godelski wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair, but I think if it works in 90% of cases that's a huge win. And it seems like it'd be pretty easy to close that gap (with multiple solution methods).

100% agree. A simple "here's what we think you owe" postcard for 90% of people and a "we think you might have unreported income based on your bank transactions - please fill out a full 1040" for the other 10% would be a massive improvement over today's system.

Right now the system is that everyone gets a "we think you might have unreported income" and I don't see any problem with that.

What I don't understand is why we can't have the IRS running their own tax prep website. The government seems to be capable of running other websites just fine.

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