What's the least scammy alternative to TurboTax? I keep paying for it every year because it's what I'm used to, and I have capital gains and all that junk so I can't free file.
FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
61–70 of 198 posts
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#62Not 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…
I 100% agree, to bad all you will get in response to your comment is how it is evil companies that prevent the noble and universally good government from helping the people. Unfortunately very few people seem to understand that government, intrinsically, is inefficient and bad at everything it does. This can not be avoided or changed it is the natural state of a monopoly. They seem to be able to recognize that when a…
> government, intrinsically, is inefficient and bad at everything it does
And yet, we need it to work well if we want things like property rights, functioning markets, public safety, law and order and so on. So why not focus on how it could become better, instead of giving up on it?
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#63What's the least scammy alternative to TurboTax? I keep paying for it every year because it's what I'm used to, and I have capital gains and all that junk so I can't free file.
CreditKarma lets you file capital gains and so on for free.
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#64The government (IRS) gets most of the data and can make a reasonable tax estimate. They should send us a bill. This find the loophole game is really counter productive and time consuming.
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Sorta the latter but not really. It was an econ student (Adrien Fabre) as part of a fiscal simulation project (OpenFisca).
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
It's not set by the employee, rather the employer looks at expected income for the year and withholds accordingly. At the end of the financial year, the Tax dept. does a final calculation and if the amount was too high/low, they send you a notice. Tax deduction at source is a common concept in a lot of countries, incl. dissimilar ones like India and the NL, where I have both worked. Super convenient and frictionless…
> It's not set by the employee, rather the employer looks at expected income for the year and withholds accordingly. At the end of the financial year, the Tax dept. does a final calculation and if the amount was too high/low, they send you a notice.
That's my question, how does an employer or taxing authority know what that amount is? My employer doesn't know my withholding status until I tell them via a W-4, and that doesn't take into account how the appropriate amount to withhold may change due to my spouse's income. Is the taxation scheme just different in most European jurisdictions?
Edit: corrected a brain fart (see below)
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#67Not 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…
There would be no problem with TurboTax if it was a product that solved a real problem. If the complexity of the tax code and the process to file your taxes were 100% a problem created by the federal government and the states. It works pretty well, it's not too expensive, it has free options, not what's to like? It isn't like that though. The IRS has nearly all the pieces it needs, if not all the pieces, to create a…
> The IRS has nearly all the pieces it needs
Some things would need to change to make this statement true. Stock brokers and portfolio managers would have to be forced to stop reporting gains without basis. Without the basis the IRS has no idea what your gains were.
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> How does your employer know what "the appropriate amount of taxes" is?
It's an approximation based on your revenue (and they know how much they'll pay you). At end-year everything is tallied all proper and as taxpayer you either have to pay the missing bits (if you have extra revenues which weren't accounted for by your salary) or you receive a wire transfer from the state (if you had deductions which weren't taken in account e.g. dependents or whatever).
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#69What's the least scammy alternative to TurboTax? I keep paying for it every year because it's what I'm used to, and I have capital gains and all that junk so I can't free file.
You can pay a tax professional for about the $100 that turbo tax apparently charges.
There is an OSS tax solver here: https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/
Only does IRS, not state, works fine for me so far.
Re: FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices
#70What's the least scammy alternative to TurboTax? I keep paying for it every year because it's what I'm used to, and I have capital gains and all that junk so I can't free file.
CreditKarma lets you file capital gains and so on for free.
And they're getting bought by Intuit (TurboTax)...