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TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

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Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#181

Post by astura »

ryandrake wrote: post #179
astura wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because rates aren't 1-2% in a typical savings account from a standard bank. If you want 1-2% interest you'll have to have a "high interest savings account" which have historically been online-only offerings and most people really can't be bothered to open up a new account and manage multiple accounts and do the transfers. For example, if you had $20,000 in a Chase savings account AND had a "Premier Relationship"…

Online makes it even easier. I opened a >2.5% 12 mo CD online and it took an hour max. No pre-existing relationship with the bank. The high yield savings accounts tend to have a few strings attached but nothing I’d consider a barrier to someone with at least a job that offers direct deposit. The biggest barrier to getting a 1090-INT is not the bank or the APR. It is having a low income and not enough money to save.

Of course, I'm not arguing its difficult or there are any barriers, I know its easy. However, I literally can't convince a single person beyond my sister to open up a high interest savings account. People just don't want to be bothered.

Me? I currently have fifteen (15) bank accounts. Chasing those sign up bonuses.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#182

Post by jonathonlui »

dontbenebby wrote: post #118
astura wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital gains and dividends in a Roth IRA is not taxed either. They clearly mean they ALSO had a taxable brokerage account that generated dividends; saying they contributed to an IRA was an (unintentional) misdirect.

Yes, I've been upfront about the error, acknowledged it, and I've edited the original post. I still stand by my assessment it's not cool to nudge people not to save. There are many people who'd like to save, but don't have 401ks. (Ex: students doing internships, contractors, or people working in the service industry) The limit for a 401k is ~18k IIRC and ~5500 for an IRA IIRC. If you had say, 10k from a summer intern…

If you're self-employed (e.g. contractor) can set up a SEP-IRA and do "employer" contributions in addition to the regular "employee" IRA contribution.

Another option is a "solo" 401k account but there's more paperwork involved.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#183

Post by vonmoltke »

danso wrote: post #7
czbond wrote: post #2

And this is news worthy, how?

Congress is debating a bill that would bar the IRS from creating an official free filing system, and instead, mandate that the IRS have private companies fill that role. The concern has been that private companies use dark patterns to upsell users into buying unnecessary paid features: https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-...

Bar it from creating free filing software. Free e-filing pf fillable forms already exists, and would continue to exist.

Not that this makes such a measure palatable.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#184

Post by spaginal »

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…

It’s done because private industry in most circumstances, does it better than government can, and at the end of the day it can be significantly cheaper and less of a boondoggle than if government did it all themselves as government likes to do.

Think of the professional experience, supply chain, and logistics for each industry where you could theoretically involve government to control or produce on it’s own.

The error of rolling everything possible under the sun into a government department, like sign laying, is you get a sign placer sitting around making a unionized $60k-$90k/year (for a $35k-$40k/year actual job), with a massive retirement pension that you will continue to pay for forever, a huge tax bill to cover the storage of all of these signs that the government has sitting around on a dirt lot somewhere, because they have zero incentive to rent them out and make money on them while not in use, and crumbling infastructure when the entire cost of the government does all attitude sucks the tax base and economy dry.

United Rentals, as a private company, has a vested interest in running their company efficiently, renting out a maximimum share of their inventory for the most profit, and their profit derived from this is not immoral behavior because it saves all of us money at the end of the day and employs a lot of people along the way. This is one more thing we won’t have to worry about the government screwing up as tax payers.

Now, let’s say a senator wrote a convoluted law that made it so only United Rentals can supply signs for government projects, cost be damned. That’s a more valid argument for moving it under government control if there is corruption and rent seeking behavior going on.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#185

Post by mars4rp »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #180
mars4rp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the developer in charge of this, thanks for promoting it.

Thanks for your work, I'm a big fan of Calfile for the years when I'm eligible to use it. Out of curiosity are there any plans to support returns with capital gains?

Thank you for using it, unfortunately no. I don't qualify to use it myself either.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#187

Post by magicalist »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #58
dontbenebby wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Yeah, I think GP was fooled by TurboTax.

See this twitter thread from ProPublica where you can't proceed in two scenarios without an upsell...because you aren't actually on the Free File page: https://twitter.com/propublica/status/1120404531433672705

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#188

Post by rhizome »

ahallock wrote: post #98
ppseafield wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is there always someone who injects "surprise" into every controversy? Who's talking about surprise?

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#189

Post by mlindner »

mars4rp wrote: post #131
CalRobert wrote: post #127

Meanwhile, California makes it pretty easy to file your state taxes for free, with no intermediary https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp

I am the developer in charge of this, thanks for promoting it.

Perhaps you can expand it so that most software developers can use it? The fact that capital gains are excluded from the e-file is really frustrating when the majority of us have RSUs/ESPPs.

Re: TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

#190

Post by mlindner »

CalRobert wrote: post #127

Meanwhile, California makes it pretty easy to file your state taxes for free, with no intermediary https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp

Unfortunately it's useless to almost all software developers/engineers in the state because they don't include capital gains.
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