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

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

#171

Post by paulrpotts »

chrismeller wrote: post #146
delfinom wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Fuck TurboTax trying to rent seek mine and anyone's ability to pay taxes. What's next? Feudalism?

You know, there’s a paper form you can fill out and send in for free if you’re that angry about it.

There have been a couple of years where I worked several different out-of-state contract gigs, and a couple of years where I received unemployment due to me from an out-of-state employer. I was not trying to do anything monstrously complicated, nor was I some millionaire - I just did the jobs that I was able to land to feed my family and pay our mortgage.

I went to experienced tax professionals to help me with those returns, and _they_ were baffled, spent hours pulling out phone book-sized paper guidebooks, and debating with each other, and making phone calls to colleagues, and I had to file amended returns - in one case, _twice_. Fortunately they never charged me anything to correct the errors, but... wow.

What hope would I have had to get it right myself, trying to fill out the various schedules?

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

#172

Post by djsumdog »

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…

Nope. In New Zealand you log into a website and it shows all your employers filings. You can send in requests for corrections if things are wrong, but it shows you taxes paid and anything you owe the IRD. It has an interface for transferring money to/from your bank account for payments/returns.

It's a little more complex if you own a business, but I think you can file and maintain all your business taxes throughout the year using an IRD website as well.

The US IRS has all the information to do the exact same thing. It's lobbying from the tax software companies that's kept them from doing so.

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

#173

Post by andykellr »

chrismeller wrote: post #145
ISL wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the cost of implementing a government algorithm has not yet fallen to near-zero. Furthermore, the government has surely implemented the algorithm itself in order to verify submitted tax returns, so the implementation cost of pre-computing everyone's tax should be comparatively small.

Maybe I’m overly cynical, but creating tax returns for everyone for free would prevent the IRS from allowing you to incriminate yourself by mis-filing (intentionally or not) and then levying huge penalties and interest on you 10 years later. Everyone is hating on TurboTax for making money, but they’re pretending the government tax machine has no such motivation, which simply is not true.

They can't levy huge penalties and interest on you 10 years later. Generally they have 3 years or maybe 6 [0].

[0] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/publications...

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

#174

Post by sunderw »

SkyBelow wrote: post #157
mywittyname wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I suggest we stop taking taxes out of paychecks and have people pay their full taxes once a year. It would help them see the total amount of taxes they pay. It would have a positive effect on government policy.

It used to be that way in France until last year. The income taxes are now substracted directly on your paycheck. I personnaly prefer having a small amout taken each month than an enormous sum as a one-time payment.

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

#175

Post by rvr_ »

cascom wrote: post #119
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…

I was under the impression - perhaps falsely - that taxes in Brazil were nightmarishly complex?

Its simple if your are an employee and complex if you are an employer. For the self employed there is a super simple filling up to a certain threshold. Companies also have additional requirements based on revenue brackets, number of employees and type of economic activities they do. Anything sligth complex eill require multiple agencies fees and byzanthine laws.

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

#176

Post by cannonedhamster »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #154
cannonedhamster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

The Republican Party itself is not a lobbying group, but a political party. To the extent that they want to make taxes worse, they are both internally motivated and also the subject of lobbying. To make my original question more pointed: Who else lobbies like Intuit? It is already well-established that the Republican Party's members broadly support these antisocial tax-frustrating positions; we are examining the peop…

Republicans are not a lobbying group, but as a political party Americans have spent a heck of a lot of money on them, especially when you include PACs. Since you've limited it to specifically lobbying groups I don't know that the PACs qualify either. They definitely aren't as narrow either. It's certainly an interesting question.

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

#177

Post by gwd »

mattferderer wrote: post #155

Sadly you can't even file a simple quarterly estimate tax return online without paying a fee. If you want to do it for free, you have to print it out & mail it. Not sure how that benefits citizens or the IRS. Intuit's main argument has always been that if the government provided such a service many people would overpay their taxes. Honestly it's much cheaper, easier & better to just find a good accountant to do your…

> Intuit's main argument has always been that if the government provided such a service many people would overpay their taxes.

If that's true, then most people would use Intuit anyway, once they realized how much they'd save.

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

#178

Post by ratww »

cascom wrote: post #119
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…

I was under the impression - perhaps falsely - that taxes in Brazil were nightmarishly complex?

There's a lot of players involved. IMO for regular people it's simple/cheap, but for companies/employers it's complex/expensive

Federal government charges taxes on income, production, import/export and over bank operations; states charge consumption and vehicle taxes; cities charge service and property taxes. Then there's also contributions that employers pay for workers, and some that workers pay.

However, consumption tax can compound itself (because of sales between distributors, or taxes over raw materials), so there's a "substitution" formula which can get pretty weird (but companies take care of it).

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by jjulius »

fedups wrote: post #117

I like propublica's reporting on this but geez, this needs an award for one of the top HN obsessions. Within the past 7 months: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free; 211 points -- 54 minutes ago TurboTax to charge more lower-income customers; 144 points -- 3 months ago Congress Scraps Provision to Restrict IRS from Competing with TurboTax; 82 points -- 4 months ago Listen to TurboTax…

That's an average of 5.28 months ago, which would've been around the beginning of May, less than a month after taxes were due to be filed. Three of the articles are from 6 months ago (mid-April), and one from 7 months ago (before filing was due). It shouldn't come as a surprise that taxes, and the cost to file them, would be fresh on peoples minds at that time.
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