71–80 of 319 posts
We're sorry the answer to "why can't we have nice things" wasn't [political party], it was lobbyists . Lobbyists is the answer to, "why can't we have nice things"!
Honest question, how is lobbying different from bribery? Lobbyists go to Washington, spend fortunes on taking lawmakers to fancy dinners and then get away with what they want. Maybe I don't understand the process and am oversimplifying it, but that's how I see it.
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Credit Karma is free. Works great, and has no discernable dark patterns. They even have import features from major payroll companies like ADP. I had to quit turbotax because one year I was a 1099 worker and every year since, it pushes me to go with their "small business edition." Each year it got harder to avoid "upgrading." Seriously, just do it. Quitting TT is so much easier than quitting anything else.
Didn’t intuit acquire credit karma? Will this be the last year of a separate ck tax product?
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>And yet what am I going to do but use turbo tax again. The perceived risk and effort of using a non-automated system to fill them out doesn't seem worth the cost. I'd suggest FreeTaxUSA.com as an alternative. Federal is always free, and state taxes are ~12/state. I don't have anything obscure about my taxes, and their forms indicate they can handle much more complicated situations than I have. I've used them for 3 y…
Why not use the official IRS free file forms?
An example is figuring out whether I would owe taxes on the gain from the sale of a primary residence I owned for less than 2 years. Figuring that out manually took some googling, finding an IRS guide, reading multiple pages of regulations along with exceptions and determining where I stood.
Another is determining HSA contribution limits when my wife and I were in individual HDHP plans part of the year, and a family plan the remainder.
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It's both.
Some people think UBI is a good idea, some bad. It's probably fair to say it's both. Simple, easy, and free tax submission is pretty universally believed to be a good thing. Except from lobbyists... that's what I meant to convey. There was also a subtle comment about Us vs Them politically being harmful, where Us vs Them (lobbyists) is likely helpful.
There are a lot of deductions a taxpayer can use that the IRS doesn't know about. Charity donations are probably the most common, but also business expenses and medical expenses. Teachers who spend their own money to buy class supplies could and should be able to submit those receipts and get a deduction.
That can't be easily simplified. The IRS could eliminate those deductions which would make a lot of people unhappy, or there could be some kind of complete retail overhaul where a teacher would be able to tag items as 'deductions' at the time of purchase, and the vendor would send all those tags to the IRS.
The IRS could just send out bills assuming no deductions, and teachers could then add supplemental information on business expense, but ( the argument goes ) teachers might not know they can, or they might not feel it's worth their effort, and so the end result is that a lot of taxpayers overpay.
Disclaimer - I have worked on tax software, but I wouldn't shed any tears if the industry went down. I'm relaying opinions I've gotten from coworkers at the time.
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So long as you're equally critical of all statements that "aren't exactly right" even when they come from groups that advocate for your political preferences, this is a totally fine and reasonable comment.
My comment is totally fine and reasonable because it's based on me sharing my personal experiences with others on HN, who may not have similar experience. The insinuation that this somehow comes from a viewpoint of political bias in uncalled for.
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I'll flip the question around... How is lobbying different than random voter talking to their representative in person? It isn't really - a lobbyist is just exercising the free speech available to all individuals - they just happen to be doing it on behalf of a group of individuals. I'm purposefully ignoring the whole "corporations are people" aspect because that's a different discussion. But, what you seem to be arg…
Money. Receiving money is the fundamental difference between lobbying and discussing policy with constituents.
I used to say turbo tax wasn't that bad, and that free filing was easy if you just ignored their promises to save you money if you upgraded. Last year however I got all the way to the end of the process where they revealed I made too much and had to pay. That felt extremely unethical, as the information required to come to that conclusion was available far earlier in the process. And yet what am I going to do but use…
That’s so cute how everyone is afraid of the IRS boogeyman
Everyone believes whichever way they first became comfortable with is saving them money and their freedom
I know people that would say the exact same thing except they are referring to their table full of printed out forms
Literally everyone with a super wrong and very human CPA says “my CPA is really good they know what they’re doing I trust them” “I have a tax guy [I wont use independent thought]”
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My comment is totally fine and reasonable because it's based on me sharing my personal experiences with others on HN, who may not have similar experience. The insinuation that this somehow comes from a viewpoint of political bias in uncalled for.
It's fair play when you use quotation marks to insinuate a strawman opposing argument that no one in the thread has actually made.
... is quoted literally from the original post on this thread.
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If there are any republican commentators willing to defend this policy I'd love to hear their reasoning. This one does seem, almost objectively, evil imo.
Where are you getting this bizarre assumption that the average Republican commentator would side with Intuit here?
https://slate.com/business/2012/04/grover-norquist-and-h-r-b...
Funny anecdote, I've been using TurboTax installable for a decade or so (having given up on doing them completely by hand). Been considering hiring a professional because you always hear that they are worth their weight in gold. (Our tax situation is not particularly complicated though, typical Silicon Valley married homeowners). Well, last year, did everything in turbotax, said we were short by like 15k. Believable,…