Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Killing TurboTax

kunle.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 692 posts

Re: Killing TurboTax

#241

Post by ghaff »

mumblemumble wrote: post #205
wheybags wrote: post #167

Something I never understood about us taxes - from reading discussions online, it seems like everyone needs to file taxes at the end of every year? Here it's only self employed, or people with rental or investment income. In a normal employer-employee relationship, the employer has to take care of it for you, they deduct taxes before sending the money to your account. This seems to be the way it works in most places,…

The USA has payroll deduction, but the tax code is complicated enough that that's only a rough estimate of what you actually owe. What you actually owe cannot be determined and deducted ahead of time, because a person's true tax obligation depends on information and events that may not be available until up to ~105 days after the end of the tax year. So, every year, you have to do a bunch of paperwork (it took me ove…

And/or you may be on the hook for paying estimated taxes over the course of the next tax year.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#242

Post by d1zzy »

wheybags wrote: post #167

Something I never understood about us taxes - from reading discussions online, it seems like everyone needs to file taxes at the end of every year? Here it's only self employed, or people with rental or investment income. In a normal employer-employee relationship, the employer has to take care of it for you, they deduct taxes before sending the money to your account. This seems to be the way it works in most places,…

The employer tax withholding does not account for any other source of income you may have (sell stocks, rental income, make money on Twitch/Youtube/ebay/etc, withdrawal from tax free investment, interest, etc) so you may need to pay more taxes than they withheld and at the same time it doesn't account for all the possible deductions you may have that year so it may withhold more than you need to pay (usually that's the "desired" case).

So at the end of each year you need to go through all the income sources of that year, subtract all deductions and compute how much actual tax you own. And pay or receive the difference to/from IRS.

Even if you have an extremely simple income situation (only one wage, no other income), depending on the state you live in you may still qualify for deductions that the employer is not aware of so it can be in your advantage to do the taxes.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#243

Post by tacostakohashi »

bluGill wrote: post #160
ISL wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't FOIA the data they use for your taxes. They have your W2 data, and it was sent to you, but they won't give it to you.

Really? You can pretty much always FOIA any records about yourself.

In the case of W-2 data, seems like you can get it as part of a transcript if you want it:

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/transcript-types-and-ways-to...

Of course, you also get a copy of the same W-2 directly, but it doesn't seem true that "they won't give it to you" if you ask them.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#244

Post by breck »

chrisseaton wrote: post #112
xrd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

> Each year, I look around for alternatives so I can avoid giving them money Why not pay an accountant? Why is everyone trying to do their own taxes? By the time you've spent a couple of hours looking for alternatives... you might as well have just paid a professional to do it!

> Why not pay an accountant?

Complexity covers corruption.

Why not just pay the nice mafia boss the protection money, and stop complaining?

First and foremost, it's a matter of principle. It's just not right to have the tax code written in the way it is written. It is written by special interests. If we all just said "complexity is no problem, we'll all just pay a small fee to accountants", not only will that "small fee" keep going up, but it will get more complex, and special interests will be better served to the detriment of everyone else.

Pragmatically I do hire a CPA, and in general like paying for the high level strategic advice. But the tax compliance services should be unnecessary. My tax returns should be a single text document that I can keep in git and copy/paste/update each year.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#245

Post by cratermoon »

willhinsa wrote: post #120
sib wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist's answer: If that were so, there wouldn't be so much money spent on lobbyists by companies. I guess there's a reason they call it "the dismal science."

when something doesn't provide a reliable return on investment, they stop spending that money. that's how much you know something works, whether it's buying advertising or congressmen.

With the caveat that the ability to measure ROI exists and is also reliable. See for example advertising, and especially online programmatic targeted advertising: https://hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid

Re: Killing TurboTax

#246

Post by mixmastamyk »

compiler-guy wrote: post #228
chrisseaton wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the IRS aren't able to work out how much tax you need to pay... how do you think they're catching people who don't pay enough tax? They must already know!

They don't already know. Sometimes they have suspicions, and then perform an audit, or request more information about a particular detail, by which they get the information they might need. Only then do they actually know. For example, you yourself may have filed with the status, "Married, filing separately", but the other person in your relationship may have filed with the status, "Single". The IRS has no idea who i…

They do know almost everything and learning more every day. Of course there are extenuating circumstances, which you will list and have to prove if a question comes up. This is not an excuse for tax filing being more difficult than it needs to be.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#247

Post by breck »

torstenvl wrote: post #133
dastx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

proper term is "imaginary property". other than that, like this comment.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#248

Post by [deleted] »

slater wrote: post #161
dastx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just had a look at what the IRS has to say about open-source software: https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/use-of-federal-tax-in... lots of vague stuff, but looking at the Google result, I noticed some differences. Ah, the meta description of the page reads: Open source software, while it can be useful in many instances and appear to be cost effective, may present a security risk because open source developers don…

[deleted]

Re: Killing TurboTax

#249

Post by cratermoon »

savanaly wrote: post #39
nucleogenesis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would an eager startup person get funded to build something that competes with TurboTax? How will you bring novel value to the industry at this point? A monopolized industry is also intentionally difficult to enter. It’s not just about buying existing competitors it’s about also making it as hard as possible to enter. So even when some startup manages to get funding and deploy a viable product, they’re immediatel…

I just don't understand why a guaranteed payday if you're even modestly successful doesn't draw competition like flies. I would think that once you're known to be willing to pay a bribe to someone who threatens you even a little you would be bankrupted in short time.

Intuit doesn't exactly buyout direct competitors, they buy companies that try to move into niches that Intuit doesn't cover. If you tried to compete directly, they wouldn't spend money and time buying you out, they'd put their resources into other ways of bumping you out of the market. Lawsuits over patents are a good one, and Intuit as around 1600 patents.

Re: Killing TurboTax

#250

Post by chrisseaton »

breck wrote: post #244
chrisseaton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each year, I look around for alternatives so I can avoid giving them money Why not pay an accountant? Why is everyone trying to do their own taxes? By the time you've spent a couple of hours looking for alternatives... you might as well have just paid a professional to do it!

> Why not pay an accountant? Complexity covers corruption. Why not just pay the nice mafia boss the protection money, and stop complaining? First and foremost, it's a matter of principle. It's just not right to have the tax code written in the way it is written. It is written by special interests. If we all just said "complexity is no problem, we'll all just pay a small fee to accountants", not only will that "small…

> My tax returns should be a single text document that I can keep in git and copy/paste/update each year.

But why do you even need a tax return? Most countries don't need it for the vast majority of people. Why does the US?

Post reply on HN