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Killing TurboTax

kunle.app

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Re: Killing TurboTax

#51

Post by Kalium »

Biganon wrote: post #40
sgwealti wrote: post #6

Or the IRS could file our taxes for us for free.

I don't know where this idea came from (I've seen it on reddit a LOT), but it's the same here in Switzerland: you do it yourself because the tax department has no idea how much you made precisely, what you can deduce from it (expenses you had to do in order to acquire your income), etc. It just makes more sense to have everyone manage their own taxes.

The IRS already has most of your income information and much of your deduction information. They already use this to validate if your return makes sense.

In effect, the IRS already does most of a taxpayer's paperwork. Since they do this, it might be nice to provide it to taxpayers for review and correction, rather than making us all start from zero each time.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#52

Post by clairity »

savanaly wrote: post #4

I'm not sure I understand how monopolies acquiring their competitors early on in order to be able to maintain their monopoly price works in practice. Wouldn't the eager gaze of startup founders looking to strike their first big score turn like the Eye of Sauron on any such industry? And all the monopoly profits that the monopolist stands to extract would in the medium run hit an equilibrium of zero when balanced agai…

this is why it's important to build an open-source tax calculation engine, as @breck and others have done, so that the creation of tax startups are not disadvantaged (they start from step 19 rather than step 1). this is (fairness in) market competition driving the market to efficiency, the exact opposite of monopoly/oligarchy (e.g., turbotax, taxact & hr block) extracting economic rents while languishing under lobbied regulatory protection.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#53

Post by dcist »

aphextron wrote: post #17
toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're paying for a service that should be provided for free by the IRS, as happens in many other developed countries. It's unnecessary financial drag on the economy.

>You're paying for a service that should be provided for free by the IRS, as happens in many other developed countries. But Turbotax is free for 1040EZ filers. It's only in an instance where you would otherwise just hire a tax accountant that they charge you. In terms of SAAS pricing, it comes out to like $15/month annualized. It's a bargain IMO.

Not true. If you have any capital markets gains, you have to pay TurboTax. I don't need a tax accountant to report simple capital gains. If you have side hustle income, you have to pay TurboTax. Basically, if you're reporting any income other than your standard day job, you have to pay. And TurboTax has done things like advertising free filing but only offering free federal filing and finding out you have to pay for state filing only after you've filled out your federal forms. It's just a scammy business that relies on lobbying and governmental pressure to stay afloat.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#54

Post by oconnor663 »

savanaly wrote: post #4

I'm not sure I understand how monopolies acquiring their competitors early on in order to be able to maintain their monopoly price works in practice. Wouldn't the eager gaze of startup founders looking to strike their first big score turn like the Eye of Sauron on any such industry? And all the monopoly profits that the monopolist stands to extract would in the medium run hit an equilibrium of zero when balanced agai…

I think you could ask a similar question about how profits work in practice. In a hypothetical perfectly efficient market, all profit margins should be zero. But in practice the world is full of transaction costs, imperfect information, and scarcity. Maybe something similar applies to reasoning about the "acquire your competitors" strategy. In a perfectly efficient market it shouldn't work, but in practice the number of startups willing to take this approach is limited (because the number of available engineers investors is limited, and in competition with other sectors), plus you only have bother acquiring the ones that manage to succeed as a company first, which is somewhat difficult. Maybe we should expect the "acquire your competitors" strategy to be partially effective, if you combine it with a relatively good underlying business and relatively high barriers to entry. Not something that necessarily always works, but a piece of the puzzle?

Re: Killing TurboTax

#55

Post by xrd »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #18
breck wrote: post #3

I started building my own open source US tax engine, but then found https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes here on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138446 ) and decided to throw my efforts with them instead. Check it out!

I was just thinking that an open-source tax engine is the way to go in the future. I would like to see it maintained by the USGOV.

> please don't use this software to file your taxes for the 2020 / 2021 tax season.

I wonder if there is a PR that Intuit filed to add this to the readme.

Seriously, I wonder how much money Intuit has spent to terrify people into using their software. Each year, I look around for alternatives so I can avoid giving them money, and each year I find some reason to grow fearful of an IRS audit and go with the company that has convinced me they are less risky than anything else. I wonder if that is truth, or if I've been programmed to think that.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#56

Post by twox2 »

siliconc0w wrote: post #35
api wrote: post #2

I gotta say I have a love-hate thing with Turbotax. I hate the company and its influence peddling, lobbying, and near monopoly status, but Turbotax itself is a very well designed product with a great intuitive experience that has done a great job filing taxes. So it's a rare case of a sleazy state-sanctioned (via refusal to simplify the tax code) monopoly with a decent product. Usually such monopolies have complete s…

Hard disagree, I've had numerous problems with their app and they constantly try to upsell you even after extracting their egregious yearly fees. There has been no innovation or even noticeable change to their product in years.

Turbotax sucks ass unless you have a simple situation with a w2 and maybe a couple of 1099s, beyond that it's a nightmare to use (for me).

Re: Killing TurboTax

#57

Post by yoz-y »

coldcode wrote: post #26
aphextron wrote: post #5

What exactly does everyone have against Turbotax? I use it every year and I love it. Sure I could save a hundred bucks and spend hours filling out IRS worksheets, but I don't want to. They have excellent UX, and serve as a reliable secure cloud repository for all of my financial information. What's the big deal?

In some countries the government calculates the (simple compared to US) taxes and all you do is approve it. That would be possible here too for most people, but neither politicians (of various stripes) or Intuit wants anything to change. Only the US turns paying taxes into the equivalent of Quantum Mechanics.

France has a notoriously complex taxation system and yet somehow manages to pre-file it for almost everybody.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#58

Post by germinalphrase »

aphextron wrote: post #30
germinalphrase wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big deal is that all the functionality of TurboTax could/should be available for free (as is done - in some form - in other countries).

And we all know how wonderful and easy to use government built software is.

That Americans self sabotage (and ignore obvious counter examples) doesn’t change the fact that filing taxes can and should be simplified and made less costly to the average citizen.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#60

Post by elicash »

kraig wrote: post #42
sgwealti wrote: post #6

Or the IRS could file our taxes for us for free.

yes, because i want someone in the irs to evaluate all of my deductions and donations

This isn't how most file.

Also, the way it works is that you still have the option of doing it yourself. But by default, done for you.

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