Younger me would say, "Or we could actually simplify and fix the tax system!". Older me unfortunately knows just how corrupt the whole thing is, thus has no hope for such honorable dreams, and is sad.
Killing TurboTax
121–130 of 692 posts
Re: Killing TurboTax
#122I 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!
In that same thread someone mentioned OpenFisca [0], which is used to codify tax law. Have you considering utilising it instead of re-inventing the wheel? [0] https://github.com/openfisca
These projects seems to come at tax policy from very different directions. US Taxes helps you fill out the specific form needed to file your taxes in the United States. OpenFisca helps you model a country's tax policy overall.
It would certainly be interesting to connect the two, but I suspect that you'd do that after finishing US Taxes. Specifically, you could take a completed return from US Taxes and transform it into an input for an OpenFisca model of the USA tax code.
As it stands, nobody has developed a USA model on OpenFisca. Perhaps that could be a next step, pursued in parallel with the US Taxes effort.
Re: Killing TurboTax
#123People misinterpret TurboTax.
Turbotax is a by-product of US tax law which gradually morphed into a wealth hiding and manipulation engine.
Can you kill turbotax? Possibility.
Can you avoid having an inherently anti human tax law, and therefore eliminate the soil of turbotax? Unfortunately no.
Re: Killing TurboTax
#124TurboTax is disgusting. I used them for a few years in the past due to their great marketing and easy to use website. But they pulled a bait & switch on me last year, at the last minute (after I had done everything) I was required to pay north of $120 to actually file. The problem isn't that they want money to use their software, it's that they're not upfront about it. Free is thrown in your face about 100 times duri…
If your taxes are super simple, you can use the IRS's free fillable forms: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... You basically type your numbers in and it does the math for you. Then you print it out and mail it in. It can't do anything complex, though. In my experience (Minnesota), state filing is even easier, usually just copying numbers from your federal form and doing one table lookup. N…
Also, if your income is under $72,000 you can use the TurboTax website completely free through the Free File program: https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers
Re: Killing TurboTax
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Is it possible to FOIA the IRS tax-computation code itself?
How useful is the computation code though? The computations themselves for the cells on a 1040 form are not that complicated and well documented in the instructions. The hard part is getting all the right numbers into the source boxes.
Re: Killing TurboTax
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
The IRS can simplify the process, sure. And if you are living alone, have no children, and don't care about taking advantage of any special credits or deductions, then a "file for me" button would be fine. (Though the process for those taxpayers is already in a good place--I filed my taxes for free in about 30 minutes this year.) But if you, say, have children, the IRS will not be able to "file for you" in any meanin…
> Right now, the system we have is pretty good. Not compared to other countries it isn't. Not by a long shot. Video with transcript below: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/dreading-taxes-countries-s... Get the heck out of here with your bull pucky
Maybe it's "bull pucky" to you, but I have vivid memories of my parents agonizing over taxes as a child. The agony they went through is much ameliorated now due to advances in technology.
And thank you for the link, but this news segment basically is big on opinion, low on specifics. Feel free to link me to a detailed article on how non-U.S. countries handle self-employment or dependent tax issues and whether/how those things are easier elsewhere.
Re: Killing TurboTax
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feels like this should be in the public domain. Any reason for it not to be?
Intuit and HR Block lobby against it every year, and the IRS continues to threaten to do it.
It is an unclassified federally-funded document -- as I understand things, it is therefore in the public domain.
Because many eyes often make bugs shallow, there is a pretty good chance that a public release of the code will find errors that both find funds that are owed to the government and exonerate people who have been incorrectly billed.
What better purpose for the American Fuzzy Lop?
Re: Killing TurboTax
#128TurboTax is disgusting. I used them for a few years in the past due to their great marketing and easy to use website. But they pulled a bait & switch on me last year, at the last minute (after I had done everything) I was required to pay north of $120 to actually file. The problem isn't that they want money to use their software, it's that they're not upfront about it. Free is thrown in your face about 100 times duri…
Intuit (owner of TurboTax) was sued over this because they had some of the darkest patterns imaginable around FreeFile. They blocked search engines from finding it using robots.txt. They would show a page where only 1 tiny link brought you to the free site, while all others switched you back to the paid one.
Pro Publica did some excellent reporting on this in 2019 and they seem to have made it one of their pet projects.
Re: Killing TurboTax
#129TurboTax is disgusting. I used them for a few years in the past due to their great marketing and easy to use website. But they pulled a bait & switch on me last year, at the last minute (after I had done everything) I was required to pay north of $120 to actually file. The problem isn't that they want money to use their software, it's that they're not upfront about it. Free is thrown in your face about 100 times duri…
If your taxes are super simple, you can use the IRS's free fillable forms: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... You basically type your numbers in and it does the math for you. Then you print it out and mail it in. It can't do anything complex, though. In my experience (Minnesota), state filing is even easier, usually just copying numbers from your federal form and doing one table lookup. N…
Free File is made by Turbotax. It's likely to discourage the government from entering the space.
dig freefilefillableforms.com
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
freefilefillableforms.com. 300 IN SOA a18-64.akam.net. nadmin.intuit.com. 2020102802 10800 3600 604800 86400Re: Killing TurboTax
#130Don't give turbotax your money.
If you want free, high-quality tax prep, consider Credit Karma (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/07/when-ta...)
The difference is that they're using your data to target financial products at you (just like any other free service). But they don't sell your data at least.