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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

#191

Post by cjslep »

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…

As an American living in Kanton Zürich, I used both (paid) TurboTax and (free) Privat Tax (straight from the cantonal government).

Swiss one was way easier to understand by far. As a side effect of doing those taxes, it was easy to see my actual wealth and my actual net income for the year. Which in America is a sin.

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

#192

Post by tathougies »

rolltiide wrote: post #62
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.

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 mo…

Easiest way to do taxes is to do them by hand. There are copious amounts of guides from the irs explaining in detail how to fill in each box.

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

#193

Post by mars4rp »

I am the developer in charge of CalFile, the free filing software that everyone asks for here for state of California.

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/inde...

I am pushing so hard to make it better and more useful to more people, like being able to add capital gain that is not currently supported.

these are the push backs that I am getting:

1. Last time they tried to do what all of you ask, a ready return. TurboTax and others hired bunch of lobbyist and put so much pressure on people here and killed the project. People are still afraid and don't want to do too much to grab the attention of their lobbyist!

2. Use of CalFile goes down every year and if trend continues, it would be killed in the near future.

when you have your Federal return it is much easier to pay a little more and file your state tax with it too. No body even knows CalFile exist because we don't have a marketing budget to promote it.

3. Even people here buy the argument that free software exist and people could file their taxes for free.

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

#194

Post by snackematician »

js2 wrote: post #99

I recently learned about this volunteer maintained spreadsheet for helping with your 1040. https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/

I've been using this for last couple years and it's a great piece of "software", I prefer it over TurboTax.

The dedication of the maintainer to this project is truly impressive.

I'm on linux but it works fine in the browser version of Excel.

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

#195

Post by nojvek »

Accujack wrote: post #124
ttn wrote: post #17

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

There are "tax help" open source programs out there, but online filing (which is the main goal here) is impossible without a corporation working with the IRS to set up access, negotiate protocols, and such. There's no open standard/API/infrastructure or protocol for online filing, so the only option for an open source program to help with that is "print out the whole thing and send it in" which is usually a lot more…

Or incompetency.

I think our leaders spend way too much figuring out how to block the other party from moving forward than solving hard problems.

China’s a bully but my god, it gets shit done at an insane pace.

That being said, how do people file Taxes in China?

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

#196

Post by symlinkk »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #188
Shivetya wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many pages of the supposed eight thousand plus pages of tax law apply to the majority of those who file taxes? The IRS certainly can tell me when I am wrong but they won't do it except when the result is in their favor; in my case I was improperly not filing HSA expenditures which would have resulted in me getting more back. It comes down to this and I do not blame Turbo Tax or any other company in this area. The…

> The IRS certainly can tell me when I am wrong but they won't do it except when the result is in their favor Yes they will. I don't know why you bother to make up a lie so easily disproved. On September 9, 2019, I received a CP16 that stated "We believe there are miscalculations on your 2018 Form 1040, which affect the following areas of your return: - Tax Computation We made changes to your return that correct thes…

Holy shit talk about a humble brag. You overpaid by $21k? You must be balling.

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

#197

Post by robert_foss »

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…

Having moved from Sweden to Germany I appreciate Elster existing (and not being solely paper based unlike the other many many German beaurocratic exercises one has to Wade through).

However it misses the most important part. In Sweden your tax declaration comes pre-populated with data they already have, like salary/pension/savings/stock sales/etc., and you can either just accept it as it is or make changes to the already existing data.

It's so easy that you in fact just can send an SMS (that is verified to be from you) to the taxation agency saying that their suggestion is right.

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

#198

Post by GordonS »

djsumdog wrote: post #170

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…

Surely that's only for employees though, not for companies? This is how it works in several countries, including the UK - your employer tells the tax service about your salary and pension payments, and you only need to fill a tax return if you have "something else" to tell them about, such as another source of income.

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

#199

Post by chrismeller »

andykellr wrote: post #173
chrismeller wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Thanks, I know it’s not 10, I just picked a round number because nothing was supposed to be that specific. Don’t be so literal...

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

#200

Post by xivzgrev »

MR4D wrote: post #190

Ok, I have a really dumb question... Why does everyone say you can't file taxes for free? The IRS has a site for it here: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f... I get that Intuit is fighting tooth and nail to keep their business, but "hiding" a page from google - seriously, is that to be considered evil now? Seriously, I'm missing something in this conversation.

You CAN, if...

1) you are under a certain income threshold

2) you go seek out that particular page (vs searching free file in google and clicking on intuit)

Or you go directly to intuit and qualify as a “free filer” which you only qualify for if you have a dead simple return - w2 and no deductions or extra forms.

The problem isn’t that you can’t file free. The problem is that intuit is doing what it can to bury it while promoting its conveniently named “free” edition that bumps you up into a paid edition faster than you can say “what?”.

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