Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?
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TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
61–70 of 466 posts
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#62ProPublica 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.
Turbotax is my cheapest option to doing taxes.
My tax lawyer would cost me probably $40,000 to do the same thing just for the hours and their obsession with analyzing parallel legal theories and case law. I use my tax lawyer to construct the whole business model before any tax filings actually have to occur. Yes I could also consider a different lawyer and cpa for actually filing the tax return. They would also be more expensive than Turbotax and I would be paying two lawyer then.
Reading comprehension gives the biggest advantage with taxes. It is worth it for me.
The IRS is more of an ally than an adversary when you are using them to basically approve exactly how you wont pay them taxes, in advance.
Barrier of entry is pretty high to unlock that level, I dont mind, its what I always aspired to do.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#63ProPublica 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.
Most of the other people gaming the system are doing it to benefit themselves personally. Intuit is gaming the system so it can continue its rent-seeking behavior against the American tax payer at large. There is an element of direct unjust enrichment against the tax payer at large which is absent from other forms of tax code manipulation.
I agree. The article just doesn't seem to acknowledge that these other manipulations exist, or reference any of their other work on the subject. It's written as a standalone piece, and when taken as such seems to blame all the ills of the US tax code on the tax preparation industry.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 foundatio…
This is "whataboutism" at it's finest. This article is on Intuit. It's focused on Intuit's bad behaviour. ProPublica has other articles on the issues you are complaining about.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It seems a bit naive of the government to reveal to you your income sources they know about. If you have any hidden ones you can confidently not report them and pay less taxes than you would otherwise.
Not really. Everyone is aware of what is automatically reported to the tax authorities.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#66Can someone from US explain how come there is still no open source alternative to TurboTax?
There are dozens of alternatives. However, tax prep software needs to be certified for correctness, and that's expensive and onerous. This is made harder due to the many many different tax jurisdictions in the US.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#67Just 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 Israel employee taxes are calculated and paid by the employer.
Only self-employed, people with side-jobs or people who make over a certain threshold need to file their taxes manually (and in that case things are a bit complicated).
Healthcare, pensions and benefits are paid as part of the paycheck if you are employed (they are universal and mandatory, so not the same as in the U.S.), there are no other deductibles that a regular person can claim.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It seems a bit naive of the government to reveal to you your income sources they know about. If you have any hidden ones you can confidently not report them and pay less taxes than you would otherwise.
I assume this would still be a crime, and you'd be held responsible for lying on the past forms in discovered. The only difference is, this is optimized for making the common case easier - the case of typical income of regular, honest individuals.
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. ProPublica is trusting the reader to understand that responsibility for the current state of US tax laws lies with the US government.
Then ProPublica should not be making statements in the article that explicitly tie Intuit lobbying to fighting efforts to improve the current tax code. See another of my replies for examples.
Are you saying that Intuit isn't lobbying to keep the current tax code, and tax filing, complex? Do you have information that refutes this article?
Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free
#70Just 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 Australia a sort of spreadsheet-like app is published each year. It pulls in data from a variety of sources (banks and employers mostly, IIRC), fills in everything it can and then lets you do the rest. Windows only last time I did it (7 years ago?), things may have improved further since then.
It's online via mygov these days. took a couple of steps back initially since it was missing functionality but I think it's mostly there now.