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TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

propublica.org

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Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#61

Post by huehehue »

neya wrote: post #9

Just curious, is there any value to making a clone of H&R Block / Intuit and making it open source (with also hosted somewhere)? It probably takes only a weekend for me to do this and I'll be happy to do it if there is significant interest from my fellow HNers. Besides, fuck Intuit, never been a fan of them for the exact reasons mentioned in the article.

I'm very interested in building an MVP that completes federal w/ appropriate schedules. Crowdsourcing state-level rules would be possible but you need some really passionate developers willing to do mountains of exceptionally boring work (imo) for free. Best to initially skip e-file and export PDFs users can cross-check and mail out on their own.

The only thing working in your favor is that you're building against a fixed spec. Unfortunately the specification is deliberately confusing and you'll probably never be able to scrape or parse those rulesets programmatically.

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#63

Post by mehrdadn »

danso wrote: post #14

FWIW, Turbotax/H&R's hiding of their Free File site pages was discussed here about a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 They have since made their pages discoverable by search engines and have denied that it was intentional obfuscation. But the news in TFA is that apparently someone at (or formerly at) H&R leaked internal documents with explicit guidance: > “Do not send clients to this Web Site u…

Does anybody know why in the world Wyden was behind this? I thought he had a pretty good grasp of things until now.

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#64

Post by thedrake »

the_watcher wrote: post #57
neya wrote: post #9

Just curious, is there any value to making a clone of H&R Block / Intuit and making it open source (with also hosted somewhere)? It probably takes only a weekend for me to do this and I'll be happy to do it if there is significant interest from my fellow HNers. Besides, fuck Intuit, never been a fan of them for the exact reasons mentioned in the article.

Credit Karma already offers a truly free and competitive product.

it looks like CreditKarma registered the tax version Tax Karma https://taxkarma.com (the WHOIS https://domains.google.com/m/registrar/search/whois/taxkarma...)

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#65

Post by mehrdadn »

asdff wrote: post #53
danso wrote: post #14

FWIW, Turbotax/H&R's hiding of their Free File site pages was discussed here about a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 They have since made their pages discoverable by search engines and have denied that it was intentional obfuscation. But the news in TFA is that apparently someone at (or formerly at) H&R leaked internal documents with explicit guidance: > “Do not send clients to this Web Site u…

Is there even a reason we have to file? My understanding is that if you don't file, the IRS knows about your W2 or 1099s anyway and will punish you, so what's even the point of filing yourself? Just have the IRS send a check or bill in the mail in April and end this nonsense industry.

Do you know how tax withholding works in other countries? Like if you have two jobs, does one have to know about the other so that they know which bracket the salaries they pay you fall into?

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#66

Post by [deleted] »

neya wrote: post #9

Just curious, is there any value to making a clone of H&R Block / Intuit and making it open source (with also hosted somewhere)? It probably takes only a weekend for me to do this and I'll be happy to do it if there is significant interest from my fellow HNers. Besides, fuck Intuit, never been a fan of them for the exact reasons mentioned in the article.

[deleted]

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#67

Post by mehrdadn »

jcranmer wrote: post #60
ineedasername wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think someone has already mentioned just how long the tax code actually is. But there's also state taxes. That's another 50 systems to implement.

Don't forget the crazy complications of multi-state taxes. One year, I ran into the issue that one state (of which I was nonresident) wanted me to compute the state taxes of my state of residency before I could compute its taxes, while my resident state wanted me to compute nonresident state taxes first. I only broke the cycle by noticing that one of the extra schedules had listed in the instructions to use that sche…

I do wonder what would've happened if both states had such schedules!

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#68

Post by danso »

mehrdadn wrote: post #63
danso wrote: post #14

FWIW, Turbotax/H&R's hiding of their Free File site pages was discussed here about a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 They have since made their pages discoverable by search engines and have denied that it was intentional obfuscation. But the news in TFA is that apparently someone at (or formerly at) H&R leaked internal documents with explicit guidance: > “Do not send clients to this Web Site u…

Does anybody know why in the world Wyden was behind this? I thought he had a pretty good grasp of things until now.

The bill encompasses many things besides this provision. But Wyden did write a letter on April 14 to the NYT in response to an editorial criticizing the tax-prep provision: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/opinion/letters/taxes-con...

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#69

Post by javagram »

asdff wrote: post #53
danso wrote: post #14

FWIW, Turbotax/H&R's hiding of their Free File site pages was discussed here about a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 They have since made their pages discoverable by search engines and have denied that it was intentional obfuscation. But the news in TFA is that apparently someone at (or formerly at) H&R leaked internal documents with explicit guidance: > “Do not send clients to this Web Site u…

Is there even a reason we have to file? My understanding is that if you don't file, the IRS knows about your W2 or 1099s anyway and will punish you, so what's even the point of filing yourself? Just have the IRS send a check or bill in the mail in April and end this nonsense industry.

The IRS does not actually have all the information placed on the tax return.

For instance, all interest is charged as income for tax purposes, but 1099-INT is only issued for $10 and above. Similar restrictions exist for 1099-MISC but at a higher threshold, if you are a freelancer who receives a lot of small 1099 income from multiple sources, the IRS has no way of knowing that.

Conversely, if you’re eligible to itemize deductions, the IRS has no way of knowing what you gave to charities over the year. That’s entirely self reported and they only even ask for the receipts if you get audited. Charities don’t send records of their donors to the IRS.

Re: TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat

#70

Post by neya »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #28
neya wrote: post #9

Just curious, is there any value to making a clone of H&R Block / Intuit and making it open source (with also hosted somewhere)? It probably takes only a weekend for me to do this and I'll be happy to do it if there is significant interest from my fellow HNers. Besides, fuck Intuit, never been a fan of them for the exact reasons mentioned in the article.

> It probably takes only a weekend for me to do this Seriously? I know there are "10x" developers out there (I actually have worked alongside one extensively) but the PDF export of all the forms and IRS eFile integration alone seems like it would take a little longer than a weekend, even for an extremely prolific developer.

Thanks for the advice, I didn't think it would be this complex when I posted the comment. Because, where I live, it's really a breeze to file taxes online. So, I had my mind setup ("How hard could this be?") until I saw another commenter's linked PDF that had about 200+ pages of spec.
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