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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

#461

Post by xtracto »

mmsimanga wrote: post #253
xtracto wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you have just said has thrown me into a tizz trying to understand what you have said. Could you please give a bit more practical details. Say I want to claim rent/transport/medical expenses. Will doctors, car rental place and landlords all issue me an electronic receipt?

Yes. Not all spending can be deducted. But for the ones you do, you have the right to ask for the "electronic invoice" and the business has to give it to you.

When that happens they ask you for your TAX ID and then the business generates the invoice and your taxid and their taxid makes the tie. The Mexican IRS systems see all of this. So at the tax reporting moment, the system will have all that info.

It is pretty neat actually. However I think it is possible bc in Mexico people are not that concerned with privacy and all that.

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

#462

Post by rfhjt »

I like to look at things from Buddhist point if view. Calfile "buys" you the saved 50 bucks (3 hours of work for most people?) x the number if people use it, especially if you understand the implications and your intent is clear. Of course, a practical Buddhist never "spends" the earned opportunities, but reinvests them to get even more opportunities, until the impact is measured in trillions of years. But that's philosophy. On the practical side, if I were you, I'd do two things: (1) open source this on behalf of the gov - it's important to get the "official" status; (2) advertise this over official channels: send them a green letter from ca.gov/irs that say there is such a tool. The software doesn't need to be perfect: the website that manages toll fees in my state is in stone age, yet it's official and it's better to have this site than not.

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

#463

Post by grecy »

joenot443 wrote: post #448
grecy wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are much, much better off. Just having healthcare makes a huge difference alone.

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

#464

Post by pas »

pfranz wrote: post #407
therealx wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most modern states just post a sign over the door prior to opening that X company seeks Y license and this location.

Yeah, that works for changes at a physical location. What about founding of an LLC or other less tangible changes? Even with a physical sign it would be nice to have a searchable long term record. That seems to be what newspapers fulfilled; public broadcast and a reasonable long-term archive.

Around here the Company Court (which decides that a company formation was lawful and registers the company) has a journal/gazette, and that's the official record. Nowadays it's of course fully on-line. And lawyers (who submit the paperwork of the new company) do it exclusively on-line (they basically upload a signed ZIP of the scanned pages and an XML)!

The clerks at this court look at the scanned pages and confirm that yes they do say what the XML says, and then this gets published.

People can search for company histories, look at their bylaws, etc.

Similarly there's a different gov service for publishing corporate yearly financial reports.

Why isn't something like that for US states?

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

#465

Post by spoontoeat »

77pt77 wrote: post #424
spoontoeat wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hats off to you, sir. Please don't stop the work you do. Thank you! After college I quickly weaned myself off TurboTax in favor of filing taxes for free with CalFile & Free Fillable Forms with an occasional paper mailing of PDFs that I download and fill out. Much like my opposition to using proprietary word processors, my disdain of paid tax return services that own your data is deep and profound. While a bit painful…

> I find Intuit to be a rather evil company. Heads up then because Intuit is behind Free Fillable Forms. In fact, when confirming phone numbers the calling number is from Intuit. That is not unexpected because they are part of the consortium running Free Fillable Forms. It's just one of those things where the USA lags behind the rest of the world, not being able to file directly with the tax authority.

> Heads up then because Intuit is behind Free Fillable Forms.

Thank you for pointing this out, but yes I am aware. It is the only method to electronically file federal taxes for free. If FFF gets dropped due to Intuit's posturing then I will have to resort to paper filing.

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

#466

Post by sneeze-slayer »

magashna wrote: post #140
sneeze-slayer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like TurboTax?

Turbotax appears to have one of the lower limits, and also are supposedly very difficult about doing the free option. https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp

My point was more that these companies offer a solution that is just barely workable so that the IRS does not just create their own usable, free software. I honestly consider them a leech on the economy.
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