TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #209

xivzgrev wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Free fillable forms are available to everyone, and referenced repeatedly in the Form 1040 instructions.

This is correct. The problem is the lobbying has stopped making forms easier or non-existent. They are complex because of private corporate influence, not the constituents of the I.R.S..

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

#272

Post by testuser454 » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

cpwright wrote: post #87

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…

Filing taxes does not actually require a separate company to help with. You can download the PDFs (or go to the post office), read the directions and fill them out yourself. I have never actually done that; but my parents did well after I was using software, which sure is more convenient.

I did this for the first time a few years ago, and it took me about eighteen hours to figure out all of the forms and terminology. And I'm not even running a business, or anything extra-ordinarily complicated. So possible, but time-consuming.

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

#273

Post by JamesBarney » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

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.

The government tax machine is in the business of collecting taxes, not running up fines. I've had several interactions where the IRS was totally with in their rights to fine me but they waved each fine because they understood it was unintentional.

The only times I've heard of the IRS going after people who unintentionally violated the rules, they were intentionally and obviously violating the spirit of the law but thought they were within the letter and were wrong.

In my experience you can make a good faith effort to figure out what your supposed to owe and pay it. In this case the IRS will treat you fairly and waive all types of fines. Or you can try to aggressively avoid taxes that you should owe in spirit. And in this case you have to be damn sure you're within the letter of the law because the IRS will try to hammer you if you color outside the lines. These seem like two fair options to me. And everyone I know who was slammed by the IRS was doing the latter.

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

#274

Post by nan0 » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

n-exploit wrote: post #270

nan0 wrote: post #257

Who is going to build this "free" tax filing system? I hope not the IRS [0] 0: https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/irs-predic...

"On 17 April 2018, the final day for U.S. citizens to file 2017 tax returns, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) suffered a major system failure related to the hardware supporting its 58-year old, 20-million-line Cobol-based Individual Master File system [PDF], which is still being used today to process the vast majority of individual tax returns. As a result of the failure, the IRS extended by a day the filing d…

"While it’s true that the IRS has experienced budget reductions over the past several years, those cuts hardly explain a failure of an 18-month-old piece of computer hardware. More important, those claims conveniently ignore that the IRS has spent untold billions since the late 1960s on numerous attempts to modernize its IT systems, all centered on trying to replace the ancient IMF system, with minimum success."

I assume you didn't read the whole source

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

#275

Post by kej » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #102

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…

Adding a data point with Mexico: All invoices are digital. Every person who gets a TaxId also gets a Private/Public keypair and generating invoices means signing the document with that key. The amazing thing is that now accountants talk about the XML, which is the legal representation of the invoice. As a result, every year if you file your taxes, you go I to the government freely provided website , get into your acc…

>also gets a Private/Public keypair

Tangential curiosity: how is this part done? Do you download the keys from a government website? How do they handle key reissues if a private key is compromised?

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

#276

Post by chrismeller » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:07 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #226

chrismeller wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There is a word for what you did: exaggeration. But your exaggeration was small enough that it was believable and thus misleading. Now you are criticizing someone for giving a factual response. Time for some reflection.

It’s just sad that you can’t see a difference between an example and an exaggeration. I wasn’t giving tax advice, I was making a point about the IRS penalizing people.

The specific amount of time involved could not possibly matter any less... the point is still valid.

I’m sure you never round your income down or your donations up and you never, ever! go even a mile over the posted speed limit.

I’m glad you can take this as an example of your own self-richeousness. Don’t confuse that with real life.

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

#277

Post by Chris_Chambers » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #226

chrismeller wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There is a word for what you did: exaggeration. But your exaggeration was small enough that it was believable and thus misleading. Now you are criticizing someone for giving a factual response. Time for some reflection.

Sure, it’s “exaggeration” if you have no imagination. Maybe someone is hit with penalties 3 or 6 years later, but then they’re consequently permanently flagged to get aggressively audited for the rest of their life and continue to deal with penalties for much longer than 10 years.

There’s a word for what you’re doing: Pedantry. There’s also another word for what you’re doing: Bootlicking. The person you’re responding to is gracefully opening the door to questioning authority and you’re not only pushing it closed on his foot on behalf of your masters but you’re doing it for free.

People like you are absolute garbage. And your little condescending cherry on top “Time for some reflection” is just nauseating. Maybe it’s time for you to look up some suicide techniques.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

mars4rp wrote: post #193

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…

[deleted]

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

#279

Post by jandrese » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

athenot wrote: post #115

cpwright wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filing taxes does not actually require a separate company to help with. You can download the PDFs (or go to the post office), read the directions and fill them out yourself. I have never actually done that; but my parents did well after I was using software, which sure is more convenient.

I used to do that. Because I'm a proud software engineer and why should this stuff be complicated? It's just numbers you add or subtract... wait, does the Transmogrifier Deduction for Frobnubilors apply when you claim to be Single-and-Only Highlander? pauses and takes 1 hour to read up on the IRS rules for this and compares with the advice of $random_internet_guy And after the personal satisfaction of having complete…

Honestly, the IRS makes these kind of questions pretty much impossible.

For example, I've been considering installing solar panels on my house. There is a federal tax credit for installing solar, and it includes associated costs like repairing your roof to support the panels. But as a normal person the entirety of the guidance is this:

"No costs relating to a solar panel or other property installed as a roof (or portion thereof) will fail to qualify solely because the property constitutes a structural component of the structure on which it is installed."

So if you get a new roof to support the panels will the tax credit cover the entire roof job, or only the part covered by the panels? I've heard from two accountants on this who had two diametrically opposed opinions on this. And if I guess wrong it's potentially Felony Tax Fraud, the kind that put Al Capone in jail for 11 years. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

So I call the IRS help line to get the official guidance on this and the official IRS position is: "We can not give guidance on this subject." It's not like TurboTax is going to have any more official of an opinion on this either. The only way to safely handle this is to pass liability off to a third party, which makes filling out your own taxes not an option.

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

#280

Post by cr0sh » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #160

chrismeller wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, that's always an option, but due the complexity of the tax codes, it's very easy to make a mistake when doing everything yourself. For example, I used to work in New Jersey, and live in New York, meaning I would have to file two state tax returns, in addition to the federal. There are weird rules that you can deduct one state's taxes from the other, and then deduct the remainder from the federal taxes. The rule…

> to provide some motivations to politicians to help simplify the tax code?

You speak of NJ, NY, taxes, "mistakes", fines, potential "audits" by the IRS, then wonder why politicians would want to simplify and improve something that many of them likely grift from or cheat on themselves, due to that same complexity...

...and one of the biggest of these tax cheats hails from NY, likely has had his now (on again, off again) lawyer, who used to be mayor of NYC and before that as a US AG - probably ran interference for his cheating and other scams.

But all of them - and plenty of others - benefit from the complexity and other issues, and don't want it any other way, unfortunately. No real good solutions to that.