Mind your own business.
Who cares what they do or their own web site.
TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
51–60 of 277 posts
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#52Why do low income people need any software to file taxes in the first place? If you just make a wage taxes are trivial.
Because companies like TurboTax work to ensure it remains as complicated as possible, and seems even more complicated than it actually is.
How do they even get into that business? They see the tax filling process and think "hey, it's too easy, let make it harder and sell a product to make it easier" (I'm clearly not a business person).
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#53As someone who lives outside of the US, can someone please explain how the US government has not implemented its own free tax filing system? In my home country this hasn't been a thing for over 10 years.
Short story: lobbying.
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#54I learned a little while ago that H&R Block makes a substantial amount of its revenue from "refund anticipation loans" (no citation, I couldn't find it here: https://investors.hrblock.com/static-files/4293dedf-951d-454... maybe my information is overblown). Is there a reason there isn't a "Robin Hood for Taxes"? A service that makes all of its revenue off of refund anticipation loads and provides all tax services for…
Credit Karma does legitimately free filing
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#55Yeah they do, of course they do. They are in business to make money, after all. The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be. It's one of the things I would immediately correct if I was king for a day.
This is directly related, I think. One reason the IRS hasn't made it easier is a deal with the industry group "Free File Alliance", which essentially privatizes this (indeed, the page TurboTax is hiding here is their Free File page). However, while 70% of taxpayers would be eligible for free filing, in practice only 3% do — no doubt because tax prep companies make it so difficult to find and use this option. These co…
Last time I tried to navigate the free system, it ended up being so labyrinthine that I just printed out the forms and did it by hand. Took about 45 minutes for a mix of W-2 and 1099 incomes.
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#56Yeah they do, of course they do. They are in business to make money, after all. The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be. It's one of the things I would immediately correct if I was king for a day.
> The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be
You know this applies to pretty much every service in the US right? A company wants to make massive profits, so it just lobbies and buys the laws it wants.
Healthcare, private prisons, banking, "security" (TSA), education, transport, etc. etc. etc.
If you were king for a day, I hope you'd fix a lot more than just doing taxes.
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather shame the government that allows Intuit to have their way with taxpayers. Intuit exists primarily because of the convoluted tax filing process in the US afterall..
Intuit is actively involved in making the process as convoluted as possible.
Right, and they are only successful because a certain government allows them to be disproportionately influential... So my comment is still very much valid.
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is directly related, I think. One reason the IRS hasn't made it easier is a deal with the industry group "Free File Alliance", which essentially privatizes this (indeed, the page TurboTax is hiding here is their Free File page). However, while 70% of taxpayers would be eligible for free filing, in practice only 3% do — no doubt because tax prep companies make it so difficult to find and use this option. These co…
Edit: As a child comment pointed out, the issue was a brokerage account I opened in addition to the Roth IRA. (The Roth IRA deposit limit is smaller than the 401K deposit limit) /// The problem with that is there's often caveats. Ex: in grad school I did a summer internship, and put my profits into an IRA. Later on, I found out I could not use many free file software, because they considered handling the dividends my…
I don't think this is true. Under "What you need to get started" on the IRS's Free File information page [1]:
> Forms 1099-DIV and Forms 1099-R, showing dividends and distributions from retirement and other plans paid to you during the year
Note that there is a difference between a tax product's freemium tier (where they can upsell) and their Free File product (where they cannot). A big part of the problem here is that these companies do their best to make you conflate the two — and then hide the second one, so they can upsell unsuspecting taxpayers who don't know the difference.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/what-you-need-to-get-st...
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is directly related, I think. One reason the IRS hasn't made it easier is a deal with the industry group "Free File Alliance", which essentially privatizes this (indeed, the page TurboTax is hiding here is their Free File page). However, while 70% of taxpayers would be eligible for free filing, in practice only 3% do — no doubt because tax prep companies make it so difficult to find and use this option. These co…
Edit: As a child comment pointed out, the issue was a brokerage account I opened in addition to the Roth IRA. (The Roth IRA deposit limit is smaller than the 401K deposit limit) /// The problem with that is there's often caveats. Ex: in grad school I did a summer internship, and put my profits into an IRA. Later on, I found out I could not use many free file software, because they considered handling the dividends my…
I'm confused. Income in an IRA isn't taxed, so that's not relevant for taxes. If you had post-tax investments then yes it's more complicated, but that has nothing to do with IRA/401k retirement savings?
Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? This is a greedy policy, not an engineering decision. How many engineers have managers they disagree with? I'm sure you've always quit every company in such a situation?
No-one is saying engineers chose the company policy, they're saying that engineers are complicit by working on it. Someone had to but that no-index instruction on the page, and they knew what they were doing. We're lucky (at least at this moment in time) that engineers are in huge demand. If you're an engineer at an ethically compromised company you could change jobs within a few months, tops. If you haven't then, ye…
That's ridiculous. Perhaps you can find in a few minutes, but I know plenty of people stuck in jobs they hate but can't find anything better. They are not quitting, and they can't move, because they have people that depend on them or other circumstances.