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FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

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Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#41

Post by guerby »

mulmen wrote: post #34
guerby wrote: post #21

In France you can fill your tax form online since 1999 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9d%C3%A9claration... In the past years banks and companies give tax related information to the tax authority so for lots of people the online tax form is already 100% filled and correct. For the past year tax filling I just had to add to the web form renting income, tax deducible donations, and that was it.

How does France build these systems? Does the government itself have IT development resources or do they contract out to private industry?

It depends a lot :).

For the tax system it was developped with lots of free software, and support purchased to French IT companies. It was hosted on a big (for the time) linux server farm.

Here are a few interviews and slides by the director of this project, unfortunately in French (didn't check automated translations, might work):

https://www.toolinux.com/article/jean-marie-lapeyre-copernic...

http://www.supelec-rennes.fr/sic/JOURNEES/05_10_20/lapeyre.p...

The free software community in France was very happy to see one major ministry doing this kind of projects at the time.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#42

Post by masklinn »

tekknolagi wrote: post #3
briandear wrote: post #2

Not sure I understand the hate for TurboTax. Literally not a single person is forced to use it. I do use it and it's a very good product for the most part. Perhaps energy should be directed at the actual tax code complexity rather than software built to help navigate filing. Ted Cruz's tax plan would have practically eliminated the need for TurboTax-type software. https://taxfoundation.org/details-and-analysis-senato…

People hate TurboTax because Intuit spends obscene amounts of money lobbying to keep the tax code complicated so they have a market.

They also spend obscene amounts of money killing online filing being provided by either state or fed.

They spent more than 1.2 million in direct lobbying against California's online tax preparation & declaration system pilot (ReadyReturn) between 2001 and 2010.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#43

Post by krapp »

syshum wrote: post #33
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe taxation is theft > However, I am a realist Choose one.

The fact is that the government, like a thief, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly an…

> The fact is that the government, like a thief, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

Yes, but I like civil society, infrastructure, paved roads and what little social safety net we have in this country, so...

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#44

Post by guerby »

guerby wrote: post #21

In France you can fill your tax form online since 1999 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9d%C3%A9claration... In the past years banks and companies give tax related information to the tax authority so for lots of people the online tax form is already 100% filled and correct. For the past year tax filling I just had to add to the web form renting income, tax deducible donations, and that was it.

Forgot to say that the french tax authority open sourced the (after FOIA-like pressure - called "CADA" in France) code that computes the tax amount from the tax form entries. It was written in a custom language (with documentation):

https://github.com/etalab/calculette-impots-m-source-code

You have each year code in the repo.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#45

Post by vonmoltke »

Macha wrote: post #36
guerby wrote: post #21

In France you can fill your tax form online since 1999 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9d%C3%A9claration... In the past years banks and companies give tax related information to the tax authority so for lots of people the online tax form is already 100% filled and correct. For the past year tax filling I just had to add to the web form renting income, tax deducible donations, and that was it.

Same idea here in Ireland. Reasons you might need to interact with the income tax system here: 1. You have significant (>€5000) non-employment income. 2. You worked for less than 12 months and are claiming your tax refund. 3. You disagree with the government assessed tax reciept (which is based on what your employer fills in). For 90% of people then, they don't need to interact with it. Their employer reports their i…

> Their employer reports their income, deducts an appropriate amount of taxes, and sends it to the government.

How does your employer know what "the appropriate amount of taxes" is? In the US I have always had trouble setting this to where I'm not at least 5% off in one direction or the other, and I know more than my employer about what my withholding rate should be.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#46

Post by twblalock »

save_ferris wrote: post #5
briandear wrote: post #2

Not sure I understand the hate for TurboTax. Literally not a single person is forced to use it. I do use it and it's a very good product for the most part. Perhaps energy should be directed at the actual tax code complexity rather than software built to help navigate filing. Ted Cruz's tax plan would have practically eliminated the need for TurboTax-type software. https://taxfoundation.org/details-and-analysis-senato…

> Perhaps energy should be directed at the actual tax code complexity rather than software built to help navigate filing. It's hard to tackle the complexity of the tax code when the company you're defending here has spent millions to keep it complex and out of the hands of the government.[0] The "tax complexity" argument is a red herring when talking about tax prep. The US government could absolutely offer free tax f…

I don't blame lobbyists for anything. I blame the politicians for doing what the lobbyists asked for.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#48

Post by chungalunga »

ourmandave wrote: post #47

Ironically, for most people the IRS has a copy of most your forms (W2, 1099s, etc.) already and can do your taxes for you if you want.

Yep, they’ll eventually send you a bill if you owe.

For some strange reason they won’t send you a refund if you’re eligible.

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#49

Post by elliekelly »

guerby wrote: post #44
guerby wrote: post #21

In France you can fill your tax form online since 1999 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A9l%C3%A9d%C3%A9claration... In the past years banks and companies give tax related information to the tax authority so for lots of people the online tax form is already 100% filled and correct. For the past year tax filling I just had to add to the web form renting income, tax deducible donations, and that was it.

Forgot to say that the french tax authority open sourced the (after FOIA-like pressure - called "CADA" in France) code that computes the tax amount from the tax form entries. It was written in a custom language (with documentation): https://github.com/etalab/calculette-impots-m-source-code You have each year code in the repo.

Do you happen to know whether the CADA pressure came from another branch or agency of the French government or whether it was some sort of transparency advocacy group?

Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices

#50

Post by klmadfejno »

God I hope this suit is successful. Lots of people here are discussing the regulatory trap they've got, and that's a big problem. But the actual problem mentioned in the suit is deceptive marketing. TurboTax is the worst in this regard.

Last year, I, at every step of the process, declined the expensive options that say "maybe you'll save more money if you permanently switch into this paid mode". Yet after a couple hours of filling out forms, they said at the end that it wasn't possible to file using the free version, and that I would have to pay a couple hundred dollars. That ticked me off. They have all of the information required to figure this out much earlier in the process (income), yet they continue to allow you to pick the free tier up until the very end where the tedium of starting over with a different service is too high. Fuck em.

Their UI is very nice though, especially for guiding people through a process that they almost intrinsically hate.

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