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Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

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Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#141

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Retric wrote: post #126
birdyrooster wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to stop calling companies “big tech” because every large cap company uses technology in a way that used to be exclusive to one tech industry.

Nintendo wasn’t a tech company for a long time but it made the switch. The same is true of Intuit, if most of your money comes from directly selling software/computer hardware ... your a tech company. That’s still not true of most large companies like say Walmart or McDonalds which still invest a great deal in technology.

Obviously Microsoft or Apple is a tech company, they sell software and hardware. It's hard to say whether Intuit sells accounting services or whether they sell software.

Is Google a tech company? Probably, but technically they sell advertisements, not software. You could say that they make money by operating ad-selling software. Walmart is a company that makes money by operating purchasing, distribution, and retailing software. An old west General Store owner could, if his records were lost, make a good guess as to what he should by from which big city distributors, when and how much of it to stock, and how much to sell it for, conversely, zero people have a comprehensive understanding of Walmart's product lines, they're just cogs in the software-powered machine that makes the corporation work.

Every large company today is dependent on software. I agree that it's a bit absurd to suggest that this means they're all tech companies.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#142

Post by tyre »

maxmamis wrote: post #88
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should literally be nationalized Political note: calls for nationalisation, in American politics, is a gift to the other side. It lets one paint the opposition as extremists without grounding in U.S. Constitutional law or the economic history of countries that regularly expropriate property. I get the impulse. But literally any other phrasing—massive fines, criminal prosecution, open-licensing requirements, et cete…

> Political note: calls for nationalisation, in American politics, is a gift to the other side. Perhaps you should rephrase this as "calls for nationalization run counter to my own free-market ideology" rather than a) assuming you know what everybody else thinks, and b) suggesting that conventional wisdom should dictate the bounds of acceptable discourse. Not to mention, plenty of countries — the US included — have s…

The comment you are replying to is not assuming that they know how everyone else thinks, _nor_ are they saying what is "acceptable discourse".

They are, rather, making a statement about strategy and messaging in American politics; a point which has borne out in countless political contests over the past decade alone. There is a reason why Republicans try to say "socialis(t/ism)" as often as possible. It works.

One example off the top of my head is Florida during the most recent presidential election. The Republicans beat the drums of socialism broadly and especially targeted at Cuban-Americans who immediately think of Castro. Voters who might otherwise skew towards Biden went Trump.

Again, that's one example, but the point is about _messaging_ and how the electorate in America broadly (not 100%, everywhere, etc.) responds to "socialism". (Nationalization being, of course, clearly tied to socialism.)

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#143

Post by minikites »

caseyross wrote: post #28

What's telling is that TurboTax's UX is really, really, good, deceptive pricing aside. Like, so good I almost enjoy using it to do my taxes. The very fact that Intuit has clearly invested money into making a beautiful interface for a tax program, a program that people use once a year , just goes to show how profitable the current arrangement is for them, and how determined they are to keep the average taxpayer from s…

>TurboTax's UX is really, really, good

It's really not. It's hard to keep track of where you are in your return and easy to get lost. You can't paste into any credential field for fetching information from your bank or other outside data source.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#144

Post by alexlmiller »

dnautics wrote: post #113

I'd love to see a turbotax alternative that 1. imports your previous turbotax years 2. charges $10 less than turbotax 3. offers a free version gated by income 4. squirrels away some percentage of profits each year to a big "F U" fund, half of which goes to lobbying for permanent income tax simplification, half of which goes to directly paying out the shareholders in the company on dissolution.

This is basically https://www.taxact.com, minus #4

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#145

Post by readflaggedcomm »

caseyross wrote: post #28

What's telling is that TurboTax's UX is really, really, good, deceptive pricing aside. Like, so good I almost enjoy using it to do my taxes. The very fact that Intuit has clearly invested money into making a beautiful interface for a tax program, a program that people use once a year , just goes to show how profitable the current arrangement is for them, and how determined they are to keep the average taxpayer from s…

I disagree that their interface is good, even in the simplest tier.

I get absurd cosmetic delays and animations, text that's tweaked to be so pale and thin that it disappears in some browsers, and tedious wizard-style workflow that you have to traverse half a dozen times when the vague language doesn't match the data on your forms. And don't get me started on confusing between "activities" (that's the official term, not Intuit's fault) because there's no way to see where you are in the process or show an overview until the end, and the final result is in a different format that I can't reconcile with what I filled in.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#146

Post by jandrese »

WorldMaker wrote: post #123
jandrese wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This year we tried doing our taxes using both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA. TurboTax has a much worse interface, it took almost twice as long to complete the taxes despite having an identical return. TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us somehow despite having entered the same information into both sites, but that amount is less than the fee TurboTax would charge so we ended up submitting through FreeTaxUSA inste…

It may be apocrypha, but supposedly Intuit years ago realized that people don't think the system "worked hard enough" if results returned immediately. (These kind of calculations are what computers do well and generally return immediately.) Supposedly Intuit has been A/B testing for decades how many artificial delays to give people the impression that the system is "working harder" for them. They intentionally want t…

It wasn't even the stupid "spinning numbers" thing that slowed us down. Mostly it was being locked into wizards asking us one question at a time.

    Dialog:

    Do you have foreign bank accounts? Y/N

    Next dialog:

    Do you have foreign investments? Y/N

    Next dialog:

    ...
For every single damn thing. FreeTaxUSA put them all in a list so we just clicked on the applicable ones. It was much more efficient.

And if you have to go back and double check/change something TurboTax makes you go through the whole damn wizard again.

TurboTax is supposedly able to import my W2 automatically (I work for a large corporation that use a large professional third party company to do W2s), but this has never worked. I always have to enter the information by hand.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#147

Post by jeffrallen »

krferriter wrote: post #12

Given how much H&R Block and Intuit have unethically and corruptly leeched from the government and the taxpayers directly, I think the should literally be nationalized and have their tax software platforms absorbed into the IRS. Their company activities over the last few decades are so flagrantly, indisputably bad for the country. There's literally no upside, none at all. They have intentionally sabotaged tax filing…

Corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, and the USA insists on keeping the barbaric death penalty, at least they should use it on companies.

Exxon would be another nice target.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#148

Post by boringg »

birdyrooster wrote: post #77
whoisjuan wrote: post #39

Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis on "some"). A sinister business model in every possible way.

People need to stop calling companies “big tech” because every large cap company uses technology in a way that used to be exclusive to one tech industry.

"Big tech" is such a catchall that it almost completely devoid of value.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#149

Post by daxelrod »

UncleMeat wrote: post #67
throwawayboise wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point why not engage an accounting firm? Yes it would probably cost more, but you're supporting your local economy and have a human being to discuss any questions with (as well as be responsible for any mistakes).

The last time I got a quote from a local accounting firm it was for $3,000. My tax situation is more complex than most but the difference between $150 for some paid software and an accounting firm is a lot . And the people working at the budget firms are basically just using TurboTax-equivalent software anyway.

The value proposition of a tax accountant is not usually crunching numbers. It's instead helping you find the optimal choices to make when filing, helping you model your situation in terms of tax code, and giving you advice about how to arrange your affairs the rest of the year to give you the biggest benefit come tax time.

The one I've used has consistently saved me more money in taxes than he costs. That said, my tax situation is also nowhere near complicated enough that an accountant has ever asked the order of magnitude you were quoted, so YMMV of course.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#150

Post by boringg »

birdyrooster wrote: post #77
whoisjuan wrote: post #39

Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis on "some"). A sinister business model in every possible way.

People need to stop calling companies “big tech” because every large cap company uses technology in a way that used to be exclusive to one tech industry.

I think OP meant - people forget about the large company Intuit being a business built on an abusive business model enabled by technology. "Big tech" is a pejorative term in this case to trigger a reaction.
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