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Killing TurboTax

kunle.app

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Re: Killing TurboTax

#131

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I use an accountant. It has worked for me for many years.

I'm grateful to be able to do that.

On another note, I used TurboTax, like, no exaggeration, over 20 years ago, for the last time.

They kept my email, and migrated me to one of their current accounts, and, on a regular basis, I get spammed by them to "reactivate my account."

The problem is that there is absolutely no way to respond, and ask them to remove me from their spam list. They try to get me to log in, instead, and the login attempts are always rejected. I have tried to contact their support, a couple of times, and received auto-bot responses that are basically repeats of the worthless footer in the spam they send me.

It's annoying. Not "jump off a cliff" annoying. More like "persistent mosquito" annoying.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#132

Post by eitland »

jcun4128 wrote: post #67
parliament32 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the "we promise not to sell your personal data" disappeared from the privacy policy during the acquisition, so we know why they remain donationware post-acquisition. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/the-canadian-tech-comp...

Ooh ToS/privacy policy diffing service alerts as a service ha

Used to be a plain Firefox extension back in the days.

It was really simple, something like:

- You clicked a button in the toolbar or right clicked and chose menu option

- a dialog showed up, you chose how often it should check the page and how big differences it should tolerate and clicked OK.

- once every hour or 4 times a day or twice a day depending on your choice Firefox would download the page locally, compare it and tell me if there were changes.

Yes, we oldtimers mostly complain about TST, but there were an entire ecosystem of brilliant extensions - so brilliant I figure it would habe been hard for me to believe today if I hadn't experienced it back then.

That's what you can have when you have brilliant people making brilliant software to empower you :-/

Edit: seriously, I would pay $20 a month for someone who would fix the new Firefox. If someone made a realistic Kickstarter I'd support it right away and then monthly if necessary.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#133

Post by torstenvl »

dastx wrote: post #81
ISL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to FOIA the IRS tax-computation code itself?

Feels like this should be in the public domain. Any reason for it not to be?

Government works generally are automatically not subject to copyright under 17 U.S.C. § 105, available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105

However, that doesn't necessarily mean they're public domain. Trademark law still applies, for example.

Additionally, not everything the government uses, even exclusively, was produced or is owned by the government. Often, government contracts allow the contractor to retain control and ownership of the intellectual property. The government may also have copyright transferred to it and retain that copyright. A legal issue I haven't researched is the line between a work that is a government work under work-for-hire principles, and therefore is ineligible for copyright protection, and a work for which the government contracts and for which copyright is subsequently transferred.

Before attempting to FOIA the source code of a piece of government-exclusive software, I would first FOIA all government contracts for the creation of that software. Then you'll have something to go on when crafting the FOIA request you really want.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#134

Post by ISL »

Thrymr wrote: post #125
ISL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Somehow, the IRS compares the tax return I submit with what they expected. It is that entire machinery that is in the public interest to be visible and audited by the public.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#135

Post by craigkilgo »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
Finnucane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turbotax et al. lobby heavily to prevent this. Given that much of the relevant information--W2s, 1099s, etc., are already reported, you'd think that this would be easier for a very large percentage of taxpayers. But it would effectively kill TurboTax's business.

Couldn't the legislators just... not do what the lobbyists want? Are they really all that corrupt?

ha

Re: Killing TurboTax

#136

Post by minkzilla »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
Finnucane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turbotax et al. lobby heavily to prevent this. Given that much of the relevant information--W2s, 1099s, etc., are already reported, you'd think that this would be easier for a very large percentage of taxpayers. But it would effectively kill TurboTax's business.

Couldn't the legislators just... not do what the lobbyists want? Are they really all that corrupt?

Yes. They really are. Here is just some over the table stuff: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/congress-corpor...

Re: Killing TurboTax

#138

Post by RC_ITR »

kleer001 wrote: post #98
motbob wrote: post #80

Earlier 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

Sure, but that would require a significant shift away from our current deduction-based approach.

Good luck prying that out of the cold dead hands of boomers (and eventually Gen X)

Re: Killing TurboTax

#139

Post by specialist »

nicoburns wrote: post #87
Finnucane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turbotax et al. lobby heavily to prevent this. Given that much of the relevant information--W2s, 1099s, etc., are already reported, you'd think that this would be easier for a very large percentage of taxpayers. But it would effectively kill TurboTax's business.

Couldn't the legislators just... not do what the lobbyists want? Are they really all that corrupt?

Legislators are basically doing triage, responding to perceived consensus. Kinda like a product manager. Think attention economy. There's 10,000s of bills filed every year. No one has the resources or bandwidth to handle that.

Any given legislator has 1 maybe 2 issues that they care about, for which they will advocate an agenda. The rest, they rely on what they're hearing.

Intuit's lobbying effectively drowns out alternative view points. Assuming that anyone anywhere is consistently advocating for something like free auto-filing.

Source: Have lobbied. Know legislators and their staff. Also read many books about legislation. Most legislators would LOVE to hear from their constituents; will bounce out pro lobbyists to give their own people an audience.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#140

Post by PrimeDirective »

“What if we could give customers a button. They’d press it at the end of the year and it would automagically file their taxes for them.” Literally is like this where I live. It's done through a government website.
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