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

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

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 466 posts

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

#161

Post by stagger87 »

grepthisab wrote: post #6
u801e wrote: post #3

Free fillable forms[1] has been around for a number of years and van be used by anyone regardless of income level. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_File#Free_File_Fillable...

Haven't read the article yet, but I assume they're probably talking about the lobbying to remove free filing or TurboTax's attempts to hide the free option as much as possible with a thousand ways to upsell you by using dark patterns during the tax filing process.

I'm only responding so others who decide not to read the article don't make incorrect assumptions like yourself. The free file-able online forms are easy to find and are not part of turbo taxes offerings. Turbo tax uses shady tactics to hide their own free offerings which they are supposed to be offering as part of a deal with the government. Free file forms are basically digital tax forms and are much more convenient over paper. Up to certain incomes they will even do most of the work for you.

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

#162

Post by finphil »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #114
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…

Canada doesn't release its own software, but it certifies a selection of free and paid software of varying complexity. I'd like it if we could take up other, simpler models of sorting out income tax but I use software out of this pool† every year and its served me just fine: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/... † usually StudioTax. I donated to them last year. It's not pretty software but i…

I concur. Studio Tax is not pretty but it gets the job done for most people.

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

#163

Post by logfromblammo »

untog wrote: post #121
Accujack wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Elizabeth Warren to get in office and stop some of this anti-competitive behavior. Warren is a run of the mill middle of the pack Democrat. She only looks good because at present the GOP looks so bad. The government needs to be reformed, electing one party or another President isn't going to change much, unless you set the bar really low (Trump)

Based on recent history Warren certainly isn't a run of the mill middle of the pack Democrat. Her positions on banking, big business, healthcare and big tech companies is a leftward lean even when compared to Obama's tenure. > The government needs to be reformed, electing one party or another President isn't going to change much And pontificating about how "the system is broken" doesn't change anything. There are no…

Both parties are constantly changing and jockeying for position in response to shifts in the political tastes of both the general public and the general public with money.

Warren might have seemed barely to the left in historic eras. She only seems left now because the recent stretches with the "left" party in control have all been very centrist. Big businesses have been allowed to grow bigger, and organized labor unions have been just treading water federally, as the individual states have been pulling their teeth with "right to work" and "at will" employment laws.

Media consolidation and campaign finance has been driving it. The median voter does not have a reliable, unbiased source of information to drive their decisions, so it's "Garbage In, Garbage Out" politics. Control the inputs to influence the outputs. One faction seems to be experimenting with packing all the main channels with misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and psyops, and that seems to be worth about 40% of the vote, if the polling is honest and accurate.

The antipodal position to this would be to invest more into public education, independent journalism, legislation penalizing prevarication or material omissions by public officeholders and appointees, anti-secrecy and public disclosure (or "sunshine") laws, and overhaul of broadcast licensing. The issues Warren is focusing on seem more concerned with the flows of money than the flows of information. It's the latter that will produce government reform in a democracy.

Going after Facebook is easy. They're a big, obvious target, and Zuckerberg isn't tremendously charismatic. But Facebook is just one business. Political disinformation is an entire industry.

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

#164

Post by codeulike »

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…

UK provides a web form. Pretty well done one considering the complexity. I think you can use your own software too if you like and theres some sort of submission api.

The only out-of-date thing I've noticed on the UK one is stuff like 'this PDF of your tax return is 1.5mb, on a dial up modem this might take 5 mins to download' etc. And I guess some people might still be on that kind of link so fair enough

edit: And yeah in the UK you dont have to file at all if your situation is simple (e.g. you just have one job and one source of income).

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

#165

Post by 0xffff2 »

tombert wrote: post #153

I really don't understand why I have to file my taxes to begin with. I have a W2 job, and my employer presumably has sent my paystubs and tax information to the government already. I then have to copy down the information from my W2 into some kind of tax filing software, and then they have to check to make sure that what I typed matches what they have, presumably paying someone to do that if I make any kind of seriou…

It's not terribly difficult to construct circumstances in which the government doesn't know how much you owe them. It's simpler to have a single policy for everyone. Therefore, everyone has to do their own taxes. I really don't think it's more complicated than that.

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

#166

Post by yxhuvud »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #51
jib wrote: post #40

Earlier 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.

Do note that it the responsibility of the employer to report who is employed, so if anything is missing, then it will generally be the company that is the one in the wrong. Especially as the company also pay employer fees for employees, so it would be a flagrant case for the tax agency anyhow.

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

#167

Post by codeulike »

Angostura wrote: post #83
MrGilbert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have to say that the UK's HMRC web-based self-assessment site has always struck me as being a really good example of tax returns done right. It presents as the equivalent of the paper form but with many of the fields autocalculating for you, and offering contextual help. Quite nifty.

Yeah its pretty good when you consider the complexity it has to cover.

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

#168

Post by abruzzi »

moron4hire wrote: post #149
kzrdude wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danish tax authority is called skat. It has a double meaning of taxes and loved one, it's as if the German one was called Schatz/Schätzle, I think it's cute.

In English, the word "skat" is used to refer to animal droppings.

technically it is spelled "scat"

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

#169

Post by lars_francke »

lqet wrote: post #73
MrGilbert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AFAIK, it is mostly developed in-house, at least the original version was developed by the Bavarian tax office. In my experience, if government software (for schools, tax offices, political participation, etc.) is developed by an external company, the primary objective of the company often quickly transforms from "creating usable software for all citizens" to "drain the most amount of money out of the infinite resour…

It still is developed there but they have external consultants helping them.

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

#170

Post by djsumdog »

When I lived in New Zealand, you didn't have to file at all. You could create an account on a website with your tax ID and see all the reports employers sent in. You could requests corrections if things were wrong and have any return transferred to a normal bank account.

In Australia, they had a desktop application you could download, provided by the government. It wasn't pretty, but it was straight forward and took less than an hour to go through the whole thing.

I once met an Aussie at a security meetup who worked at immigration and I told him how surprised I was that I got my visa in like two days. He was like, "oh I worked on that piece. Yea that use to take two weeks; but we were able to fix a lot of that process." I wouldn't be surprised if Australia taxes were all web based and even faster today.

Post reply on HN