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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

#461

Post by Gh0stRAT »

intopieces wrote: post #429
adventured wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US hasn't had a real balanced budget in much longer than that. During the Clinton era the balance was achieved in part by stealing from Social Security by keeping the surplus inflows and pretending there's a magic locked Social Security box with trillions of dollars in it (which are really IOUs backed by the Fed's ability to debase the future for past over-spending). We similarly treated as 'surplus' tax revenue…

Can someone explain to me the negative consequences of running a deficit? Countries aren’t people. They don’t die. As long as countries are willing to lend us money and the US can service the debt, what does it really matter if the national debt is multiples of the GDP?

We will spend $479 Billion in interest on the national debt in 2020.

That's >22 NASAs-worth of money, if you care about space exploration. It could be roads or high speed trains or education or healthcare or whatever you care most about.

Instead it's going towards paying interest on debt incurred for cheap political wins in the past...

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

#462

Post by colejohnson66 »

m463 wrote: post #330
privateSFacct wrote: post #8

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…

Isn't that like being arrested and hoping the court will streamline your judgement, sentencing and incarceration. In other words: the government and the IRS should have checks and balances to income taxation, not (literal) carte blanche.

Even if the IRS has their own filing program, Intuit and H&R Block wouldn’t go out of business; People who want to make sure their getting the best would still use them, along with people just distrustful of the government.

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

#463

Post by colejohnson66 »

sct202 wrote: post #32
ppseafield wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurate: Intuit told the federal government they would absolutely offer a free e-file tax service next to their pay service, and then they used several lies and manipulative techniques so that folks could not find it or even discover its existence.

Or if you do find it, you get intermodals with dark patterns upselling the paid service, and once you upgrade you can't downgrade back to the free-file version.

Well, you can “downgrade”... You just have to start all over. Which IMO is absolutely atrocious.

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

#464

Post by colejohnson66 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #159
nightski wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the government always pays interest on money it owes you.

Is that interest taxed?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21924216

Yes.

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

#465

Post by RandomTisk »

testis321 wrote: post #453
RandomTisk wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly, knowing how much taxes you pay is important (and as i said in a comment above, problematic, if people don't know). But this can be solved by autofiling taxes, and then sending a yearly report: you earned X, paid Y taxes, out of those, Z goes to this, Q to that, W to that other thing, you've used these government services this year, that cost that much money, etc.

No doubt, the thing for most people, including anyone who hates paying taxes is the bottom line. I don't see any connection though between the bottom line paid and how forgiving people will be when they discover how easy it is to file. I suspect the word prominent is a misnomer at best, it just makes no sense to me.

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

#466

Post by rayiner »

kerkeslager wrote: post #377
rayiner wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't citizens demand a public tax filing process? Because they don’t want to make it easy for the government to impose lots of taxes. Americans have the lowest taxes in the developed world. Not especially for rich people, but for everyone else: https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/inline-images/I... . This isn’t the work of some secretive cabal of billionaires. Rich people hire accountants to do the…

1. This doesn't make any sense. The easiest way for the government to impose more taxes is to raise the percentages on the taxes they already collect. Private filing has nothing to do with it. 2. Americans don't have the lowest tax rates in the developed world. Mexico, Ireland, Chile, Turkey, and South Korea all have lower tax rates[1]. And in some cases the governments provide more services with less money because t…

> 1. This doesn't make any sense. The easiest way for the government to impose more taxes is to raise the percentages on the taxes they already collect. Private filing has nothing to do with it.

To raise the percentage rates, politicians have to vote to raise those rates. Private filing means that everyone is very aware of how much they’re paying in taxes. It’s not just an invoice they receive listing how much was withheld. They have to recalculate it. That makes them much more sensitive about voting for politicians who vote for higher taxes.

> 2. Americans don't have the lowest tax rates in the developed world. Mexico, Ireland, Chile, Turkey, and South Korea all have lower tax rates[1].

I don’t think people would consider Chile and Mexico to be developed countries. You’re right that Ireland and South Korea are lower (depending on the year, Ireland cut taxes significantly recently). But they’re together with the US in the bottom band.

> And in some cases the governments provide more services with less money because they're not spending half their budget on occupying other countries.

I think it’s true that other countries do more with less. But it has little to do with the military budget. US government spending as a percentage of GDP is 38%, meaning all levels of US government spend $7.3 trillion annually. The military budget is just 10% of that, or 3.2% of GDP. That’s high compared to Europe, but not a big difference compared to overall government spending. The US military budget is proportionally where the U.K. and France’s was in the late 1980s, back when those countries had robust welfare states: https://worthwhile.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451688169e2022ad3a0...

If the United States cut its military budget to the same proportional level as France, we’d have an extra $175 billion for other things. That’s not nothing, but to put that into perspective, we spend $970 billion a year on education (5% of GDP). We spend $1.1 trillion on healthcare and welfare for poor people. Cutting our military budget to European levels wouldn’t revolutionize our budget.

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

#467

Post by danschumann »

mumblemumble wrote: post #198
danschumann wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think are more steelman'ed version of the GOP argument is: when government does things badly, they can go VERY VERY badly. It's a risk viewpoint. Whereas the progressive viewpoint letting government do more and more things. The other risk is bloat. Once a government program exists, it is very very hard to stop it and get the funds back ( from a political perspective ). It's unpopular to fire people. When government…

Sure, but that argument just doesn't track. Both parties are similarly aggressive about big government programs and spending. The real variables are what they want to spend money on (health care or national security or schools or the Farm Bill or whatever) and where they think the money should come from (tax the beneficiaries of these programs or tax their children and grandchildren unto the tenth gener-- er, finance…

Maybe there have been corrupt wolves in sheeps clothing... but the word "republican" and the word "democrat"... the "republic" is the very few set of rules which usually limit what the government can do, and the "democracy" is all the oodles and oodles and oodles of legal code on the books. So, if the parties respected their names, republicans would be for smaller gov, and democrats for more gov. I would say modern day "libertarians" resemble the republican name most truly.

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

#468

Post by thinkegictalk »

http://bit.ly/2M25Xvz Obesity has become an epidemic in America. Men and Women gain pounds of weight in no time. They find it way harder to lose weight. The weight loss industry, like the gym, fitness centers, dieticians, and hypnosis programs are fooling their victims

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

#469

Post by twblalock »

fedorareis wrote: post #422
twblalock wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So for some percentage of Americans TurboTax won’t be able to compete because they can’t save you more than the IRS already did with its deductions. Except many people will try TurboTax or a competing solution anyway, just in case they can get a little bit of money back.

I would expect that to be common for the first couple years but after a couple years of realizing that they aren’t saving any additional money or are saving less than they are paying for TurboTax I’d expect that to drop off.

Unless using TurboTax actually saves people money. I wouldn't expect the IRS to have enough information to be able to predict in advance the deductions people might be able to take -- stuff like business expenses, mortgage interest, charitable donations, state taxes, etc.

Tax evasion and overstating deductions are common partly because the IRS doesn't have access to the information necessary to verify everything -- that's the same information the IRS would need in order to pre-fill tax forms accurately for the 1/3 of taxpayers who itemize their deductions. 1/3 of American taxpayers a pretty big market for TurboTax and similar services to thrive in.

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

#470

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

m0zg wrote: post #290
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work so well for the self-employed, alas.

Only if working with individuals. If I, as a consultant, work with a company, that company requires a W9 from me, and they have to report what they paid me. And I also report what I paid myself in salary and pay federal taxes from every paycheck I make out to myself. So at least for me, they know everything there is to know.

I sell stuff (software, so not really stuff). I certainly file my quarterly estimated taxes (state and federal), but until I file my annual return, the government has no idea how much I've actually earned, nor what my expenses were. Consequently, they're in no position to tell me what I owe them until I've filed my entire return.

Perhaps what the commenter meant was "we should fill out forms detailing income + expenses (where applicable) and the government should compute our taxes for us". I'm mostly good with that idea.

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