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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

#441

Post by JoeAltmaier »

maximente wrote: post #397
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

Ok, how about cost overruns, administrative costs, technology upgrades and on and on? Its only as regards these things, that I regard profitability to be an important pressure.

Management responsible to the bottom line will sometimes improve those things. Management responsible to … I don't know what a government agency is responsible to? rarely upgrades, review, improves. It is axiomatic of government agencies that they exist for their own sake. And cost a bucketload of (our) money.

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

#442

Post by JoeAltmaier »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #373
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I mean, honestly, yeah? I'd rather not my roads focus on being profitable. I'd really prefer the opposite of my police force focusing on being profitable. I'd really start freaking out if my voting system(the actual counting of votes) focused on turning a profit, and probably take to streets if my public schools were trying to profit off my children. Efficiency, sure, what's inefficient about the USPS? I sent a packa…

Yeah but a website/accounting function? It should be accurate, efficient and legal. Which our tax office is sometimes seen as not-those-things.

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

#443

Post by SolaceQuantum »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #442
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, honestly, yeah? I'd rather not my roads focus on being profitable. I'd really prefer the opposite of my police force focusing on being profitable. I'd really start freaking out if my voting system(the actual counting of votes) focused on turning a profit, and probably take to streets if my public schools were trying to profit off my children. Efficiency, sure, what's inefficient about the USPS? I sent a packa…

Yeah but a website/accounting function? It should be accurate, efficient and legal. Which our tax office is sometimes seen as not-those-things.

And this whole thread is how TurboTax lobbied to make it inaccurate, inefficient, and no doubt have tried to make it illegal.

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

#444

Post by fsw »

levosmetalo wrote: post #206
robert_foss wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alr…

In Germany, it's actually similar. You can opt in to include the data submitted for you by various sources and include them in your tax declaration. The only drawback is you need to select each one (salary, basic info, church tax info) to import it into your declaration, and that you need to wait until end of February since that's the deadline for third parties to submit your data. Also, some things, like capital gai…

It's called "Vorausgefüllte Steuererklärung" (see https://www.elster.de/eportal/infoseite/belegabruf_%28privat...).

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

#445

Post by samnwa »

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…

You are amazing for building and running this program. People like you are what give me hope that we can build a better government! Thanks for all you do!

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

#446

Post by formercoder »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #365
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a strawman argument. Being "government run" does not automatically equate to being irresponsible or inefficient. Your complaint holds no water: Social Security and Medicare are incredibly efficient programs for their scale, and both wildly popular with their participants (per Pew Research as well as direct survey data from SSA and HHS). If they can achieve such results, why would other large orgs such as the…

I don’t know about social security but the claim that Medicare is more efficient than private insurers is not correct. It only appears to be so due to accounting procedures that do not expense services from other govt agencies on Medicare’s pnl. So for example, a different department of the government handles billing, all the costs therein are not included in Medicare’s bottom line, thus inflating its efficiency.

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

#447

Post by toomuchtodo »

formercoder wrote: post #446
toomuchtodo wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strawman argument. Being "government run" does not automatically equate to being irresponsible or inefficient. Your complaint holds no water: Social Security and Medicare are incredibly efficient programs for their scale, and both wildly popular with their participants (per Pew Research as well as direct survey data from SSA and HHS). If they can achieve such results, why would other large orgs such as the…

I don’t know about social security but the claim that Medicare is more efficient than private insurers is not correct. It only appears to be so due to accounting procedures that do not expense services from other govt agencies on Medicare’s pnl. So for example, a different department of the government handles billing, all the costs therein are not included in Medicare’s bottom line, thus inflating its efficiency.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/sep... (Comparing administrative costs for private insurance and Medicare)

Medicare is still more efficient than private insurance, even allowing for Social Security handling a lot of the administration you mention. Social Security must exist, and must provide the services it does, so you would of course rely on their infra if you're Medicare.

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

#448

Post by joenot443 »

grecy wrote: post #384
Akinato wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that there are few, if any, countries in the world that this description would not apply to. However, I agree with the point that you're making wholeheartedly. There's a very serious amount of wealth disparity around the world, and the rich have gotten so rich that they can't even feasibly spend all of their money if they had to.

You need to spend more time in better countries. The lives of middle and lower class people in Australia, Canada, Scandinavia, etc. are much, much, much better than Americans, and improving all the time.

Do you think so? I live in Toronto and wealth inequality is still constantly at the forefront of political discourse. Obviously Toronto isn't indicative of the rest of Canada, but I don't feel as if poor Canadians are especially better off than poor Americans.

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

#449

Post by cpwright »

Someone wrote: post #352
0xffff2 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but surely that aren't going to charge you anywhere near $1000.

”unless I pay them $1000 to publish the name of my LLC in two public newspapers for six weeks, one daily newspaper and one weekly newspaper” Reading that as “one daily newspaper and one weekly newspaper”, that would be 6 (weeks) times at least (6 + 1) = 42 adverts in a newspaper (I can also read it as “2 public, one daily and one weekly”. That would increase the number of adverts). Price per advert would be about $25…

I think the law made sense in the past so that the formation of a company would be well-known and not a secret. Now that everything is available online, less so. That the publication servicing companies know you exist, advertise directly to you because of that, and need no other information than your payment to do the publication is proof that the law is no longer useful.

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

#450

Post by dharmon »

_9vzr wrote: post #224
r0m4n0 wrote: post #158

A few weeks ago I started an LLC in New York. I followed all the simple instructions online and the process was actually very straightforward and easy. I had an official digital copy of proof my LLC existed within an hour. I went to sleep with and thought that there is hope for our government. Within a few days I received a letter from a private company informing me that unless I pay them $1000 to publish the name of…

In VA, if you want an alcohol license for your restaurant, you are required to print an ad in a local newspaper stating that you intend to get a license. I'm guessing it's so some prohibitionist can call up the ABC and complain? It's completely ridiculous. I wondering what will happen when print newspaper ceases to exist.

In Palo Alto we would receive notices in our mailbox whenever a local business was applying for a liquor license.

I think this is fairly common.

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