Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 277 posts

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#91

Post by dontbenebby »

gsk22 wrote: post #64
asdfuadirea wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I assume they meant a Roth IRA, which does tax deposits.

I may have mispoke. In addition to a Roth IRA, I also had a traditional brokerage account. It's my understanding even if you invest in index funds/ETFs, some of the stocks in the funds generate dividends and those can be taxable even if there's no capital gains tax on the growth in value of the index fund/ETF.

Anyways, whether it was from the brokerage I opened or the IRA, I had a class of income that would have made me need to pay to file, even though my total income was below 65k.

Another thing was foreign taxes paid (because some funds in one of your indexes are international). But they don't let you just say "listen, I'd rather skip the credit for those two whole dollars in taxes and not pay 50 dollars to file"

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#92

Post by Raugharr »

chrismeller wrote: post #82
jakelazaroff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding an IRA is "incredibly uncommon"?

If you’ve got only W2 income then a 401k would be much more common. A normal IRA is “common” as well, but not nearly as much so I’d argue. As another comment pointed out it could have been a Roth IRA, which has different rules. It could also have simply been some other oddity or quirk of the tax software at the time. None of the specifics negate anything related to complexity vs cost.

My company doesn't offer a 401K, does this mean I shouldn't be allowed to file taxes for free?

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#93

Post by fifnir »

cr0sh wrote: post #87
grecy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, tra…

I don't know why, but all of this "privatization" bugs the hell out of me. Maybe it has something to with wanting to see my taxes being used properly, rather than going to a private company's profits. Maybe it's the abstraction; that'd I like to know that the workers I see doing the work for the government are government employees, and that I am, in some small way, helping them? I mean, sure, with a private company t…

> I don't know why

You know exactly why it bugs you and you're absolutely right. I think what's confusing is how can other people NOT see these huge problems

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#94

Post by rdiddly »

Who wants to just start writing a free version and start putting them out of business? Filing taxes is not the Linux kernel, I mean how complicated is it really? It's still just a matter of following directions and doing basic math. Computers are great at that. No rocket science needed. I even thought of a name: Caesar (as in "render unto..."). Caesar.org is available.

At the end it generates a PDF for printing & mailing.

After the first x users we lobby for our own connection to the IRS system like those companies have.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#95

Post by ummonk »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #70
chrismeller wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Amount of income is actually quite a crappy measure for what should be free to file. If it’s flat W2 income with nothing else to consider then sure... When you start adding in all these other little side cases you’ve blown your argument. They literally take more effort (either on your part deciphering and completing, the CPA’s part deciphering and completing, or Turbotax’s part developing and validating…

Funding an IRA is "incredibly uncommon"?

The poster miswrote. It wasn't an IRA, but a regular investment account that generated taxable dividends. Much less common.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#96

Post by ummonk »

bunderbunder wrote: post #79
jakelazaroff wrote: post #27

Earlier 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…

Correction: 100% of taxpayers are eligible for free filing, and 70% of them are eligible for free electronic filing. The options out there for free e-filing are hardly any better than the paper option, though. They're typically just the paper forms translated very directly into an electronic fill-in form. You're still left to your own to make sense of all the byzantine rules and instructions, and to grind through it…

USPS is not free.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#97

Post by mola »

grecy wrote: post #56
metalliqaz wrote: post #4

Yeah 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, tra…

The sad thing is that this is being exported across democracies around the world. This subversion of the democratic process would probably bring to its demise. And the waters are so muddled with identity politics and false enemies ("Bolsheviks") that we can't even have civilized discusssions on this problem. Sad state of affairs.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#98

Post by ahallock »

ppseafield wrote: post #47
craftyguy wrote: post #42

Earlier 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 lobbies to keep taxes complicated so they can continue to have a business model. https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

And this is surprising because? It would be surprising if they didn't do that, honestly. The government is at fault here for selling political power and not representing the interests of the people. We could boycott Intuit, I suppose, or use different products, but aside from that, the fault and source of the problem lies squarely with the government.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#99

Post by asdfuadirea »

dontbenebby wrote: post #91
gsk22 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they meant a Roth IRA, which does tax deposits.

I may have mispoke. In addition to a Roth IRA, I also had a traditional brokerage account. It's my understanding even if you invest in index funds/ETFs, some of the stocks in the funds generate dividends and those can be taxable even if there's no capital gains tax on the growth in value of the index fund/ETF. Anyways, whether it was from the brokerage I opened or the IRA, I had a class of income that would have made…

That's a rather big misstatement: most lower income people (most people in general actually) won't be investing post-tax, a 1099-DIV really is quite uncommon

It's still a shitty and stupid situation... but that doesn't mean it's relevant for most free filers.

You should be able to skip the foreign tax credit if you manually enter the 1099-DIV: simply enter foreign taxes paid field on the 1099-DIV as 0, and your tax software won't offer to credit it.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#100

Post by logn »

Google "turbotax free" which returns https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi...

This is not recent either. I remember getting to this page from Google on tax day.

Google "turbotax" and it returns the free edition link nested under the first result.

Post reply on HN