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TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

propublica.org

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Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#31

Post by danso »

ttn wrote: post #17

Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

I'm a TurboTax user myself (b/c I almost always procrastinate to the last day/week), but my guess is because tax forms and rules change every year. Maybe the general situation for free filers is easy enough to code for, though? Though one of Turbotax's purported features is that it'll tell you how easy/complex your taxes can or should be, depending on your situation.

Also, one of TurboTax's features is e-filing. Maybe there are free e-file alternatives (as in free, with no upsell or strings-attached whatsoever), but it seems you have to be an "authorized IRS e-file provider" to do this, i.e. there's not a developer API: https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#32

Post by jrockway »

ttn wrote: post #17

Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

Typically open source projects come from two places; a company needs software, or an individual thinks writing it would be fun or at least save them time. Preparing individual tax returns falls into neither category; companies have no interest in individual tax returns (they don't pay that kind of tax), and individuals only have to do it once a year so it's not time-efficient to write a program to do it.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#33

Post by throwaway_law »

ttn wrote: post #17

Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

There are...you can download any tax form for free and fill it in by hand or in a PDF program.

You will see articles regularly attacking TurboTax because SV has been wildly unsuccessful in producing a startup that can compete with TurboTax, so instead a lot of effort is spent attacking them in the media.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook all spend significantly more on lobbying to ensure market hegemony. Don't be surprised at the pattern, attack TurboTax in the media, then up pops a new startup that will disrupt the industry. Rinse and repeat.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#34

Post by vonmoltke »

Ensorceled wrote: post #7
vonmoltke wrote: post #2

ProPublica seems to be singularly focused on Intuit to the exclusion of all the other powerful interests who benefit from a complex and opaque tax code. They may be fighting efforts to make filing easier under the current rules, but they aren't really doing anything to keep those rules a clusterfuck.

In this article on how Intuit is working to prevent free filing, ProPublica focuses on Intuit? Why is this surprising? ProPublica seems really broad in the topics they cover: https://www.propublica.org/topics/ They also have multiple articles covering other types of tax reform and on closing tax loopholes if you search their database.

> In this article on how Intuit is working to prevent free filing, ProPublica focuses on Intuit? Why is this surprising?

My issue is that the article, and many posters here, make it sound like all the ills of the US tax system trace back to Intuit. Statements like (emphasis mine)

> Intuit fended off the government’s attempts to make tax filing free and easy

and

> But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.

These statements ignore the vested interests that got all the complexity inserted into the tax code in the first place. Intuit didn't create the capital gains tax structure, the laundry list of special interest deductions available to itemizers, the complicated business income/loss rules, or any of the other elements that make preparing taxes a confusing game of hopscotch between various forms and schedules. They also would not be the loudest voice of opposition if any of those elements were to be removed to simplify taxes.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#35

Post by mywittyname »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #20

Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but I don't see much of a difference between extorsionist tax filing software and scam callers warning me about the IRS suing me. Can the government please make something that's easy to use? Filing taxes isn't something that requires a separate company to help with, and I see no reason why these products have a right to exist (and especially not be canonized), especially with how exploit…

> I see no reason why these products have a right to exist (and especially not be canonized), especially with how exploitive they are or can be.

But if we remove the annual pain of dealing with taxes, then Americans will get complacent and may stop being bothered by having to pay taxes.

- The serious ideology of a major American political party vis-a-vis taxes.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#36

Post by vonmoltke »

juped wrote: post #30
vonmoltke wrote: post #2

ProPublica seems to be singularly focused on Intuit to the exclusion of all the other powerful interests who benefit from a complex and opaque tax code. They may be fighting efforts to make filing easier under the current rules, but they aren't really doing anything to keep those rules a clusterfuck.

This topic hits people in the wallet and makes them stupid as a result - I think they're being sincere, not malicious.

I didn't say they were being malicious, just myopic.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#37

Post by MrGilbert »

lqet wrote: post #22
gjvnq wrote: post #9

Just for comparison: in Brazil the _Receita Federal_ (IRS equivalent) provides a free multi-platform* Java desktop app for filing your taxes. The UI isn't great* and if you do complex stock trading it can be a pain to add the necessary information, but for the vast majority of people it works just fine. It also shows if it is better to use the standard deduction or the itemized deductions for your particular case and…

Fun fact: the official tax filing application in Germany which has been around for a few decades is called "ELSTER" (apronym for El ektronische St euer er klärung, "Electronic Tax Return") which literally translates to "MAGPIE", as in "thieving magpie" ("Diebische Elster"). This is a form of self-irony which is quite unusual for the German tax offices. OS portability has greatly improved with their online app [0], wh…

ELSTER is one of the few examples that come into my mind in terms of "software done right": It's stable and "just works", at least for me.

It's first version was released to the public in 1999, so... Yes, ELSTER is around for almost 20 years now, getting constantly refined at least in the front-end.

All in all, it's something you wouldn't have expected here in Germany in terms of software projects from the government.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#38

Post by journalctl »

throwaway_law wrote: post #33
ttn wrote: post #17

Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?

There are...you can download any tax form for free and fill it in by hand or in a PDF program. You will see articles regularly attacking TurboTax because SV has been wildly unsuccessful in producing a startup that can compete with TurboTax, so instead a lot of effort is spent attacking them in the media. Google, Microsoft, Facebook all spend significantly more on lobbying to ensure market hegemony. Don't be surprised…

Nice editorializing. TurboTax is actually maligned (as plainly stated in TFA) because of their lobbying efforts to keep tax filing difficult.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#39

Post by cannonedhamster »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #4
vonmoltke wrote: post #2

ProPublica seems to be singularly focused on Intuit to the exclusion of all the other powerful interests who benefit from a complex and opaque tax code. They may be fighting efforts to make filing easier under the current rules, but they aren't really doing anything to keep those rules a clusterfuck.

Who else lobbies like Intuit? Who else spends millions of dollars on defeating measures intended to make paying taxes simpler and easier?

The Republican party? Seriously Grover Norquist wants taxes to be painful so you associate them with bad feelings. They made it illegal to compete with TurboTax by offering a free piece of software from the IRS. Look up California's FreeFile software. There is nothing Republicans have done that helps taxpayers unless they make over a higher than average amount of money. I'm not even trying to be political, this has just been an arm of their platform since the 1980s. I've included a link to a podcast which goes pretty deep on this topic.

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/07/18/tax-filing-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/house-bans-free-government-t...

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#40

Post by jib »

gjvnq wrote: post #9

Just for comparison: in Brazil the _Receita Federal_ (IRS equivalent) provides a free multi-platform* Java desktop app for filing your taxes. The UI isn't great* and if you do complex stock trading it can be a pain to add the necessary information, but for the vast majority of people it works just fine. It also shows if it is better to use the standard deduction or the itemized deductions for your particular case and…

In Sweden, the government does the work for most normal cases. They send you a suggestion of “this is all we know about” and you just say “yeah, seems right” via SMS.

In Ireland you don’t do anything in the usual case, unless you think it’s wrong, everything is taxed at source by the employers/banks.

Both cases different if you’re a company ofc.

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