51–60 of 489 posts
HN has always been at war with TurboTax. Edit: looks like this line didn't go over so well. To avoid distractions, I'm going to move these links to another post and mark this subthread off topic. Links moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21924055 .
There's a large backstory documented by (mostly) propublica, some of it is here: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... Essentially: * IRS wanted to open tax software business to private companies. * Intuit has a variety of products with similar names and each has a free offering for a specific set of tax payers (e.g. income below some number). IRS + US Gov bought the story. * Intuit caught d…
[0] https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/bgj6oz/turbotax_...
This USA tax thing has always baffled me... it is the exact definition of why we pay taxes: for the government to provide services that are common to the country´s citizens. There´s nothing more common than tax collection: rich, middle class or poor. Why wouldn't citizens demand a public tax filing process? Even in Mexico we have an automagical tax filing process that makes: a) The great majority of the population wh…
An actual argument I've heard from TurboTax shills is that tons of people underpay taxes now with the self report system, and having the government pre-fill forms for you to rubber stamp would effectively increase taxes on the working class.
This USA tax thing has always baffled me... it is the exact definition of why we pay taxes: for the government to provide services that are common to the country´s citizens. There´s nothing more common than tax collection: rich, middle class or poor. Why wouldn't citizens demand a public tax filing process? Even in Mexico we have an automagical tax filing process that makes: a) The great majority of the population wh…
An actual argument I've heard from TurboTax shills is that tons of people underpay taxes now with the self report system, and having the government pre-fill forms for you to rubber stamp would effectively increase taxes on the working class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% agree. To me they seem to be playing this perverse game of knowing how much you owe based on your W-2s then not telling you, waiting for you to file and guess how much you owe just right. If you guess wrong tough luck, you get penalties years later.
I'm not an American but I've been doing US taxes for 10+ years. There's never been any guessing involved. What were you trying to guess? I've underpaid precisely once, when I didn't know about qurterly reporting, and the so-called "penalty" was nothing unfair -- just the interest the money earned in my account instead of the IRS's.
The IRS already knows the numbers on W-2 forms because they get the same data from employers. Financial institutions also send them 1099s and other forms.
So the IRS already knows all the numbers. There's little point in making people manually re-enter the data.
The IRS should automatically fill in everything it knows about, and then let people add deductions and unreported income if they need to. It would make filing taxes almost a no-op for a lot of people.
Fantastic news! Now let's have the IRS start building out their free e-file program and IDEALLY put some pressure or at least summarize what parts of the tax code are the most complex so they can be simplified. A lot of the tax code complexity comes from congress messing with the logic of taxing folks on their income. And yes, simplifying the tax code would get rid of loopholes like deduction that can exceed the cost…
Trump's tax plan did simplify things for the majority of W-2 workers on salary that used to itemize because they owned a mortgage. Now, most of them can file using the standard deduction.
I don't have a mortgage but have sometimes itemized depending on moving and work expenses, various deductions, etc. Those are now gone, and my taxes are easier as I don't even bother keeping receipts and saving charitable gifts throughout the year. I come out a head, too, since the standard deduction was almost doubled.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% agree. To me they seem to be playing this perverse game of knowing how much you owe based on your W-2s then not telling you, waiting for you to file and guess how much you owe just right. If you guess wrong tough luck, you get penalties years later.
I'm not an American but I've been doing US taxes for 10+ years. There's never been any guessing involved. What were you trying to guess? I've underpaid precisely once, when I didn't know about qurterly reporting, and the so-called "penalty" was nothing unfair -- just the interest the money earned in my account instead of the IRS's.
There is no reason the IRS shouldn't have a simple, online fillable 1099EZ that makes the calculations and validations for you. And while their at it, match the SSN to the w2 info that they have on file. This would take care of 80% of the population. Just don't outsource it. I'm sure USDS could have it ready in less than a year.
> There is no reason the IRS shouldn't have a simple, online fillable 1099EZ that makes the calculations and validations for you. It is largely due to Republicans that we don't have such a program. Voting matters. https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t...
HN has always been at war with TurboTax. Edit: looks like this line didn't go over so well. To avoid distractions, I'm going to move these links to another post and mark this subthread off topic. Links moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21924055 .
>HN has always been at war with TurboTax. "Snarky trivialization of activism on this issue" seems like the very kind of thing you'd normally discourage.
So how is there still a "deal" with tax software companies?
Isn't the whole deal that the IRS would not make such software?