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IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

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Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#411

Post by danans »

jxramos wrote: post #282
danans wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A flat tax would be more regressive than a progressive tax scheme - it's a spectrum. > That's about as equal and fair as you can get Equal in terms of % of income paid: yes, fair: no way. Your statement makes the assumption that the opportunities to gain higher income are equally and fairly distributed, which they are manifestly not.

Actually I just tried to tease out a definition from the investopedia article, which I was mislead reading the sales tax example which has a fixed amount (the price of some taxable goods) which holds no sliding scale based on income. The regression appears to be strictly around the idea of burden to the individual and how much disposable income they get left with. Looking at the wikipedia article they claim that flat…

> Where in my statement does the assumption of equal income mobility pop up? You wrote:

> [A flat tax is] about as equal and fair as you can get

I disagree about the fair part, but we likely have different ideas about what fair means in this context. For me, equal opportunity to income mobility is part of what fair means.

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#412

Post by arcticbull »

burfog wrote: post #402
arcticbull wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s double taxation. It’s not fair to literally tax me on the taxes I have to pay to another government entity. I don’t even get taxed on the taxes I pay to foreign governments with no cap (?!). The government is “one” from my perspective wrt taxes. No reason for me to pay federal tax on my state tax, period. Your argument just makes it more efficient for the federal government to be wasteful than state government…

I was in fact thinking of that idea that "high tax states also pay for literally all the other states", and I pointed out a flaw in that argument. They are underpaying their federal taxes. The voters in those states also happen to be the ones voting for expensive government programs, so it is only fair that they pay. There is no double taxation. You owe tax first to the federal government. The state could let you ded…

How is it fair that my taxes paid to the state of California, a US state, are much less deductible than my taxes paid to foreign governments? No cap on those. The idea is that taxes paid are not really income but rather my cost of doing business, nothing to do with who gets them. It’s like an expense for a business. No matter how high or who they go to they’re not taxed; they’re deducted against income.

California takes that tax revenue and reinvests it into the populace which is what generates the income the federal government relies on in the first place. Think of state tax revenue as COGS. The federal government has always been second behind the states and been severely limited in scope and responsibilities. You know what if a state had 100% tax, they could decide between themselves and the federal government how that would be used to service national obligations without involving me.

Further it is patently double taxation if I have to pay taxes to two entities based on the same unadjusted income. Fair or unfair (in your opinion or mine) it is what it is: double taxation.

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#413

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

Sabinus wrote: post #406
syshum wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people do understand how taxes are used and fundementaly disagree that taxes should be used for those purposes Taxes sole purpose should be to collect money to provide services, Nothing else they should not be used to socially engineer the society the way the government sees fit, that is not a free society or a functioning democracy/republic at that point

Australia gives tax cuts if you have a family with children. (Family tax benefit part A and B). Do you think that's unacceptable social engineering?

That’s ok, because by having children you provide a service to the state (i.e. ensuring its existence in the long run).

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#415

Post by RandomTisk »

cactus2093 wrote: post #363
danShumway wrote: post #281

Excellent news, and congrats to Propublica for in no small part making it happen. This wasn't just a shady operation -- Turbotax openly lied to customers about its free file program, it deliberately suppressed the program from search results, it lied to veterans. It was 100% acting in bad faith during negotiations with the IRS. Sometimes topics like this end up becoming kind of ideological or partisan; but in this ca…

There's a good Planet Money episode that explains how surprisingly it is still a partisan issue. The Republican argument, at least from certain prominent people in the party, is that if paying taxes gets too easy the average American will be less likely to push their representatives to lower taxes or to oppose new taxes that get proposed.

Which 'prominent people'? It sounds like an incredibly silly argument, one I had never heard of before.

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#416

Post by stjohnswarts »

xtracto wrote: post #38

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…

It's mostly because so many special interests have gotten loopholes put in for their particular pet project, simplicity be damned. That's just the way politics works in America.

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#417

Post by Florin_Andrei »

granzymes wrote: post #7

>Now companies are barred from hiding their free products from search engines such as Google, and a years-old prohibition on the IRS creating its own online filing system has been scrapped. >Under the new rules, participating companies also have to standardize the naming convention of their Free File version as “IRS Free File program delivered by [product name].” Respect to ProPublica for their commitment to this iss…

This is great news.

The US is making great strides towards joining the rest of the civilized world in the 20th century, finally.

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#419

Post by rockinghigh »

burfog wrote: post #379
jacurtis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries have this "automagical tax filing process". And what kills me the most is that America actually secretly has this same system too . Yet every year we have to go through the charade of filing taxes ourselves, when the governemnt already knows what we owe without us needing to round up paperwork, W2 forms, 1099 forms, and so forth. Yet they make us do it anyway. Don't believe me? Simply don't file your t…

If it was automatic, income would be missed. The government would be revealing what it doesn't know about, and people would not supply the missing information. Under the current system, people aren't sure what the government is aware of. Because we get in trouble for leaving things off, we are more likely to report everything.

We know what the IRS knows because the majority of people get the same forms as the IRS as far as income goes: W2, 1099, 1098, ... Unless you’re self-employed, the IRS only misses some deductions or foreign income.

Re: IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax

#420

Post by pishpash »

dahfizz wrote: post #302
erik_seaberg wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same problem as with auto repair and medicine. It's nice that we have competing providers, except we don't have the expertise to judge their performance.

> except we don't have the expertise to judge their performance. Well, this is a bit different in that regard. Last time I tried it, it was free to put all my info into turbo tax and see what my amount owed would be, and then it would be a fee to actually file. I assume most tax software works that way. So it's actually very easy and objective to see the performance of these systems. It would obviously be a big hassl…

I can assure you the secret sauce in "exploiting" tax law is almost never in choosing one thing or another during filing (there should only be one optimal answer once the facts are already created), but in tax planning. The tax software even hints at that. Paying for tax filing itself is basically a low-level scam.
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