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Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

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Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#171

Post by tzs »

rayiner wrote: post #147
kristopolous wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second one is new to me. It's really fascinating how they choose a set of policies and work hard to construct a reality that supports the policy positions. It strikes me as so backwards. It's tinfoil hat, but my only conclusion is the actual reasons for the policy are so incredibly unpopular that they invent these realities to obscure them.

How are they “constructing a reality?” How much taxes you pay is the reality. They’re trying to draw more attention to it, by forcing you to look the numbers in the face once a year. That’s not “constructing reality” it’s drawing attention to it. I love paying my taxes and support higher taxes with more government services. But I agree with Norquist that it’s a useful exercise for people to go through once a year and…

I think I'd be more aware of the overall state of my income and how it is taxed if I were given a nice organized summary of everything the IRS already knows about me.

Take investments. The current way I get 1099-INT and 1099-DIV forms from a variety of sources. I've got to go to each source and find and download the form.

They are all laid out differently, so there is some confusion when I'm trying to find the right number to use for my filing.

I get so caught up in the mechanics of finding the 1099s, and ensuring that I've got them all, and finding the right data and copying it to or adding it to the right line on the right form that I don't really notice the numbers themselves.

If the IRS sent me something that said "Here are all the 1099s we have received from your banks and brokers. We received forms from ", and had a nice table of the 1099-INTs and 1099-DIVs and any other similar forms, each telling me where it was from, the amount of interest or dividends or whatever, how much of that was taxable, and if it was ordinary income, short term capital gains, or long term capital gains, with totals at the bottom, I'd be much more likely to actually notice the numbers.

Even if I still had to copy the numbers to my IRS filings, it would be a vast improvement, both to making less work for me and to Norquist's supposed goal of making me more aware of how much I make and how much of that goes to taxes.

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#172

Post by ta1234567890 »

rayiner wrote: post #147
kristopolous wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second one is new to me. It's really fascinating how they choose a set of policies and work hard to construct a reality that supports the policy positions. It strikes me as so backwards. It's tinfoil hat, but my only conclusion is the actual reasons for the policy are so incredibly unpopular that they invent these realities to obscure them.

How are they “constructing a reality?” How much taxes you pay is the reality. They’re trying to draw more attention to it, by forcing you to look the numbers in the face once a year. That’s not “constructing reality” it’s drawing attention to it. I love paying my taxes and support higher taxes with more government services. But I agree with Norquist that it’s a useful exercise for people to go through once a year and…

> They’re trying to draw more attention to it

That’s what they are claiming, but there are many ways (probably a lot better), of drawing attention to taxes, aside from forcing you to go through a bad process.

Additionally, if they were truthful about what they are saying, they should be trying to draw attention to government budgets and make them transparent, i.e. how much the government spends and collects.

Government spending is out of control, and clearly people being forced to file their taxes through a crappy system hasn’t fixed that. Why would anyone ever think that keeping things as they are will do it?

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#173

Post by pc86 »

orblivion wrote: post #169
osrec wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't you need internet access to submit your taxes?

I didn't look into how it works yet, but you're likely right. Does the IRS have an open API like that? I was assuming it generated pdfs or something.

E-File is a thing but I'm not sure how open the API is. This app specifically just generates a PDF.

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#174

Post by Majromax »

rayiner wrote: post #154
eyelidlessness wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the good reason: some people are philosophically opposed to easy taxes - people should be painfully aware of the money they are giving to the government. That’s only a good reason if you’re opposed to the actual programs and/or outcomes. If you favor those programs and outcomes, making people “painfully aware” of their cost almost certainly undermines them. Which... > The bad reason: Lobbying by intuit and parties…

> That’s only a good reason if you’re opposed to the actual programs and/or outcomes. If you favor those programs and outcomes, making people “painfully aware” of their cost almost certainly undermines them. Not at all. I support bigger government providing more services. I’d happily pay a lot more taxes. But I also support forcing people to grapple with the cost of government once a year. They should be making the i…

> But I also support forcing people to grapple with the cost of government once a year.

But that's one-sided: people do not have the same requirement to "grapple" with the benefits of government once a year. That feeds right into known cognitive biases, where we underweight small but steady effects and overweight concentrated effects.

If you had a "yearly day of reckoning" with your partner where you re-hashed every argument, fight, or disagreement from the previous year without commensurate attention to the benefits, I daresay it would not be good for your relationship.

Moreover, this approach doesn't even seem to be effective at instruction. In particular, many people don't seem to understand the difference between marginal and average tax rates (link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5724773/), which is a precondition for understanding the system as a whole.

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#175

Post by rayiner »

JackFr wrote: post #164
rayiner wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to me that people assume it’s lobbying, and not the fact that Americans are the most anti-tax people on the planet, creating a strong constituency for making tax filing difficult to increase public visibility of tax rates. In the 2020 election, pretty much every ballot measure to increase taxes failed, including in blue states like Illinois and Colorado. Other countries have lobbying too. What they d…

> Americans are the most anti-tax people on the planet Our origin story is literally a tax revolt. “No taxation without representation” — they weren't looking to get a couple of new members elected to Parliament. Definitely focused on the no taxation part.

What’s surprising is how it’s kept up through subsequent waves of immigration. My dad is an immigrant from Bangladesh, votes straight ticket Democrat, but thinks Biden’s “no tax increases for people making less than $400,000 policy” is totally sensible.

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#176

Post by rayiner »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #172
rayiner wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they “constructing a reality?” How much taxes you pay is the reality. They’re trying to draw more attention to it, by forcing you to look the numbers in the face once a year. That’s not “constructing reality” it’s drawing attention to it. I love paying my taxes and support higher taxes with more government services. But I agree with Norquist that it’s a useful exercise for people to go through once a year and…

> They’re trying to draw more attention to it That’s what they are claiming, but there are many ways (probably a lot better), of drawing attention to taxes, aside from forcing you to go through a bad process. Additionally, if they were truthful about what they are saying, they should be trying to draw attention to government budgets and make them transparent, i.e. how much the government spends and collects. Governme…

Drawing attention to government budgets isn’t sufficient because most people just assume “someone else” will pay for them.

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#177

Post by jabroni_salad »

warent wrote: post #109
harikb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just that it is blank, it is expected that certain things that you fill match what they already know. It is more like a test, where you get nothing if you answer correctly and penalty if you make a mistake. Note: IRS does provide a way to download what they know as a pdf (what banks reported, for example), so one can get some help with the "test"

I don't think this is exactly right is it? My understanding is it's not about testing you, it's just a matter of resource allocation in a severely inefficient system. The IRS does not have the resources to manually verify all of everyone's income, so instead they use a process of flags which trigger audits of varying depth. Flags include things such as certain reported amounts/types of values. Shallow audits review s…

I no longer have the paperwork, but I can assure you they will just bounce your filing if you transposition a few numbers. Dyslexia is why I use a tax prep service now...

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#178

Post by smilebot »

pc86 wrote: post #173
orblivion wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't look into how it works yet, but you're likely right. Does the IRS have an open API like that? I was assuming it generated pdfs or something.

E-File is a thing but I'm not sure how open the API is. This app specifically just generates a PDF.

From their website: You need to be an authorized e-file provider (1). I'm guessing that if you're approved, you'll get access to their API. And you'll show up in their list (2)

1: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/become-an-authorized-e-... 2: https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options

Re: Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp

#180

Post by atomwaffel »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #52
vages wrote: post #15

Related fun (and sad) fact: In Norway, the tax submission forms are online and so user friendly that you don't need a tax filing program like this. Edit: Here is a link to an explanation for the form, in English, which was revamped in 2020: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/taxes/tax-return/tax-r... The submission form is essentially a wizard that asks you questions related to your situation and your past year. D…

You'd be hard-pressed to find any other developed country than the US where it's not similar to that.

Having filed taxes in Germany, Switzerland and Norway, I can give you two developed countries where it’s not similar to Norway. Not as bad as what I hear from the US, but not simple either.
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