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

391–400 of 466 posts

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

#391

Post by crummy »

stonith wrote: post #70
Nursie wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I moved to Australia last year and was shocked that it took me less than two minutes to file taxes. What a dream.

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

#392

Post by perl4ever »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #289
rubicon33 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really as simple as that? Budget trumps all? With all due respect to the OP, most state run software operations are complete, utter, garbage. I'd happily pay money to avoid some of the clunky, poor UI/UX, and downright broken web tools that the state of California produces. TurboTax on the other hand, is a relatively nice experience.

I personally think the Calfile UI is better than TurboTax for what it does. CalFile's UI isn't shiny and Web 3.0, but it is nice and linear and easy to understand. IMO TurboTax can get a bit weird if you skip around sections or need to manually look at the generated forms. CalFile doesn't have all the features that TurboTax does, like being able to say "I donated a microwave to charity, figure out my deduction". Howe…

"but it is nice and linear and easy to understand"

I never wanted "linear". My ideal tax software just has the forms to fill out on screen, but applies all the constraints and rules so that the return is either consistent or you have a comprehensive list of discrepancies. And cascades any fields that can be derived from others. Really, just like a compiler for taxes.

Edit: TurboTax used to work like this...

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

#393

Post by 0000011111 »

I am all for free filing software for the people!

What TurboTax offers that a free version may not is the ability for a CPA to sign off on one's taxes. That is worth paying for in my opinion. B/C they carry the liability if I were to be audited.

I think the IRS needs to simplify the filing process so that a CPA is not needed.

Sadly, this issue is more complex than intuits lobbying power.

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

#394

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

Eugr wrote: post #389
rubicon33 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really as simple as that? Budget trumps all? With all due respect to the OP, most state run software operations are complete, utter, garbage. I'd happily pay money to avoid some of the clunky, poor UI/UX, and downright broken web tools that the state of California produces. TurboTax on the other hand, is a relatively nice experience.

TurboTax is getting worse and worse every year. One example where it worked well before and became a complicated mess now: for some deductions you need answer a lot of questions just for it to tell you that you are not eligible because of your income. Why not to check this in the very beginning?

If they told you sooner that you weren't elligible, your return would be lower, and maybe you'd feel you could "get more back" by using a different tax preparation program, but at the juncture where you're told it isn't possible, you already feel more invested in using Turbotax and ultimately filing with it.

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

#395

Post by isaacgreyed »

kerkeslager wrote: post #366
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm that's been a big issue for maybe 200 years. Should the government start its own companies? What happened to the free market? How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

> How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)? The leadership of government organizations has pressure to get re-elected, or to get someone from their party elected. I'm not sure whether you are simply ignorant how representative democracy is supposed to work, or whether you're feigning ignorance. Is it really so unfathomable that people might be motivate…

Is the vote of the election ever: "Can you make this one website that is messy better?". People are more focused on big issues and annoying software won't often make the platform.

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

#396

Post by exikyut »

marcosdumay wrote: post #344
Anarch157a wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Brazil the mascot of the Income Tax is a Lion, it's of an old ad campaign the government ran, comparing taxes with lions and saying "the lion is tame".

It's because of an old popular joke in that the government is a lion that will always take a lion-sized bite from your income. It's really an old joke. On any reference I have ever found, no matter how old, the joke is already old and the readership is expected to know it.

Oh of _course_, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion's_share

Which is obviously intentionally ironic considering that

> The lion's share is an idiomatic expression which refers to the major share of something.

I wonder what other countries tuck these kinds of harmlessly blatant humor in similarly unexpected places. It's nice.

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

#397

Post by maximente »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #361
toomuchtodo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USPS requires Congressional approval to set rates (as well as pension funding requirements). Your complaint is with your representatives, not USPS itself.

My complaint is with 'government-run businesses', which will always have such issues. It stems from not being responsible for efficiency or profitability.

it is telling that the only way you seem to judge entities is through the lens of efficiency and profitability on a short term basis.

could you please share your thoughts about internet access in the US of A? it seems that despite the best efforts of Saint Market, long may he reign, and all of this wonderful competition and efficient allocation of resources and so forth optimizing for short term outcomes has led to mediocre speeds and monopoly-ish behavior/choice in most areas.

or that Saint Market has led to pretty poor health outcomes in the USA despite spending massively amount more per capita than other nations

or that Saint Market's desire for profitability and efficiency leads them to, say, not replace lead pipes which ruin health of various communities (probably far away from yours, so it's OK .... for now)

it's almost like evaluating things based on extremely myopic criteria that people use to judge for-profit companies leads to outcomes that optimize for local maxima but are horrible when viewed from even slightly more far out, like, i dunno, a few years.

can you acknowledge that some things are best evaluated on performance outside of "profitability" and "efficiency" in the time span of 3 months?

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

#398

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

mszkoda wrote: post #296
jkeuhlen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My intuition is that the elected officials are wary of choosing positions blatantly opposite of the interests the lobbyists are pushing for since the lobbyists could easily support a different candidate and put a lot of money into supporting them. So if you don't behave in the way the powerful lobbyists want, they'll get you kicked out of office.

It is exactly this. You look at donations to people from corporations or through lobbyists and they don't look that large, $15-20k and they are getting big bills passed. That $15-20k isn't buying the politician or their vote. The threat to give millions of dollars to the opposing politician that will support them is.

There are limits on how much you can donate to a candidate's campaign; however, you can contribute unlimited funds to a PAC, but the PAC's advertisement efforts must be separate from the candidates; they can't be coordinated.

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

#400

Post by perl4ever »

Spooky23 wrote: post #371
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm that's been a big issue for maybe 200 years. Should the government start its own companies? What happened to the free market? How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

I worked for a self-sustaining government entity for a few years. There was no direct appropriation, all funds re recovered via fees. We were able to compete successfully with commercial entities in a variety of ways. A big advantage is overhead. If the work scales out, government employees get paid less, especially executives. The disadvantage was that you couldn’t make money to re-invest, and capitalizing new servi…

I've worked in a private sector (publicly traded) fortune 500 company, a large government contractor, a non-profit state government subsidiary that was quasi-independent, and now for a state government.

My experience is that in the public sector, things often move slower, but the range of productivity seems to have a significant overlap with an average large company. I think the cost of nobody believing in what they are doing is an underappreciated drag on many private sector workplaces. The fact that failure is not an option in the public sector has several oft repeated negative consequences, but it also means that you have a reason for coming to work and making an effort, (other than not starving) even if nobody appreciates it, management is terrible, working conditions are lousy, pay is poor, co-workers are idiots, etc. That counts for something towards effectiveness, if there is a core group that hasn't descended into nihilism.

Post reply on HN