Earlier quoted context omitted.
The monopoly is the government though, not Intuit...There is no way you can argue that Intuit has monopoly power over government!
Have your heard about a little thing called lobbying. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
211–220 of 332 posts
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not a fact of life, it's a known quantity but not a fact and not life-related. And you can definitely ban it as well. It's not a requirement, and it's not the best, only or 'current' way. It's just a weak side-effect of the status quo (yes, technically that means 'weak' and 'current' but that is besides the point).
> It's just a weak side-effect Isn't it literally a constitutional right? It's not a side-effect of anything - it's a right by itself.
Perhaps from a US-centric perspective. I don't know for a fact if a company or non-person is universally allowed to direct the facility that is the government to do something or not do something everywhere in the world.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
The monopoly is the government though, not Intuit...There is no way you can argue that Intuit has monopoly power over government!
Have your heard about a little thing called lobbying. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
The whole "companies get political speech through untold millions $$" makes lobbying more like a quid pro quo bribery system. Its fine that companies have a vested interest in how the gov't runs and policies are put forward but the bastard child of "political speech" and capitalism is IMHO a lot like corruption. Obviously my opinion is not original and a lot of people talk about this... but lets not forget how this works.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#214Intuit is consistently one of the least ethical actors in tech. They have a monopoly position in many of their products and take advantage of some of the poorest people through misinformation and lobbying. Facebook & Uber have received most of the heat over the past few years. Intuit has strangely avoided the same level of scrutiny.
It's even worse - if you don't opt-out of the data sharing, they have an absolute field day with all your financial data.
They soak up a lot of the tech talent in San Diego, and every person I've met that works there on the TurboTax team has admitted to me that they feel ethically torn about what they do.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's just a weak side-effect Isn't it literally a constitutional right? It's not a side-effect of anything - it's a right by itself.
Perhaps from a US-centric perspective. I don't know for a fact if a company or non-person is universally allowed to direct the facility that is the government to do something or not do something everywhere in the world.
Lobbying isn't directing the government. It's presenting your point of view to the government. What the government does with the information you give them is then up to them but sometimes they're obligated to show they've considered it. It's a super-basic part of democracy everywhere. It's usually a right and also actively encouraged through consultation periods while legislation is drafted.
I can't understand anyone suggesting that we should not be allowed to present our opinions to the government. What are you in favour of? Just voting once every four years or so and never saying anything else the rest of the time? Bizarre.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
A CPA takes a risk doing your taxes. They are responsible if something goes wrong. That is probably $400 an hour. If you are paying less than that make sure it’s actually a CPA doing your taxes. There may be a CPA at the firm, but unless they sign and do your taxes you aren’t protected by their liability.
An accountant with a CPA could have ten or twenty seasonal temps working under them, but at the end of the day they will review and sign the outgoing product. They are liable and will be on top of your case if the IRS comes to bother you, but don't expect the personal attention of the CPA. Also, personal accounting is an increasingly niche industry.
That’s only if the CPA is in that position. My mom has worked at places where they had a CPA on staff, but they were only doing here for consulting. They never reviewed or signed anything.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
i reckon people hate filling out tax forms by hand more than turbotax… and within good reason, even if you’re educated it can be frustrating to simply read tax regulations (which turbotax translates to simple english), and there’s a lot of anxiety around messing it up unfortunately turbotax is also one of the major players trying to prevent tax simplification… so they’ve got a great scheme going anyway there are more…
I really don't get the money side of US politics. How do these companies use money (presumably) do sway politicians? Just openly contribute to individual politicians/think tanks/PACs? How do they launder the money Is that what the PACs do? Make sure Joe Politican can get the money, but isn't seen handed a bag of cash from a company? Or is it simply that accepting campaign donations from corporations isn't seen as cor…
It's utterly insane. It's insane how much influence money can have on politics, when it's basically entirely spent on election campaigns. (And some fancy fund-raising dinners, and stuff, but I think that is less important.)
It's insane that election campaigns are such an important and expensive part of politics. Accepting millions of dollars, and for what? To keep your job for another few years. Where the biggest part of your job is getting more money for the next campaign to keep it for another few years.
Real campaign finance reform could do so much.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#218What'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…
Strongly disagree.
It is well designed to hold you by the hand if you just go down the happy-path of what a user who has all their documents in hand when the right question pops up on the screen.
It's poorly designed for people who want to go back, people who just want to input their forms, and people who value their time. There is no reason each question needs to take up its own screen, instead of being a list. There is no reason it needs to pretend to calculate for 15 seconds after every few questions.
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#219Intuit is consistently one of the least ethical actors in tech. They have a monopoly position in many of their products and take advantage of some of the poorest people through misinformation and lobbying. Facebook & Uber have received most of the heat over the past few years. Intuit has strangely avoided the same level of scrutiny.
i reckon people hate filling out tax forms by hand more than turbotax… and within good reason, even if you’re educated it can be frustrating to simply read tax regulations (which turbotax translates to simple english), and there’s a lot of anxiety around messing it up unfortunately turbotax is also one of the major players trying to prevent tax simplification… so they’ve got a great scheme going anyway there are more…
> even if you’re educated it can be frustrating to simply read tax regulations (which turbotax translates to simple english)
Not sure I agree with this statement. My experience with TurboTax is that the actual tax regulations are not that hard to read, and that TurboTax's translations do nothing to resolve the ambiguities of the tax code.
For example, the tax code might allow "deduction of reasonable expenses for blah blah blah" and the TurboTax "explanation" will be "You can deduct blah blah blah, but be sure the expenses are reasonable". Ok, what is "reasonable"? Oh, well, you know, reasonable.
It's like a high school student plagiarizing something they found on the internet by rearranging each sentence just enough that it isn't googleable.
Turbo tax is great if your income comes from one or more W-2 jobs (that pay cash) and a simple stock portfolio or investment properties. As soon as you start dealing with RSUs, stock options or (horror! ESPP), it starts becoming more trouble than its worth.
The ESPP thing is especially weird. Every office job I've ever had offered ESPP (so it's not some edge case). TurboTax will double tax your ESPP, unless you know the trick to enter your real cost basis[1]--and TT won't ever prompt you with "Hey, looks like you have some ESPP! Want a step-by-step guide to enter your cost actual basis so that you only pay as much tax as you actually owe?"
[1] https://thefinancebuff.com/adjust-cost-basis-for-espp-sale-i...
Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
American telecom industry has done much better after US government ended government granted monopoly to bell labs. Plenty of literature on that topic actually. Same for aviation. Whatever bad things you see with ATT and Comcast are actually a direct result of city granted monopolies which will likely be ended by Musk's Starlink sooner or later.
How have they done better? Prices have risen substantially as quality of service stagnates or deteriorates unless the companies are given grants and subsidies by governments to compel them to upgrade infrastructure at the taxpayer's expense. All the while they reap ever growing profits and lobby to get their employees onto regulatory boards to prevent any pro-consumer regulation. "city-granted monopolies", are you ki…
> And starlink won't save anybody. For one thing, satellite internet already exists, you can buy it from providers like Viasat, DirecTV, and Hughesnet: it's expensive and the latency is outrageous because of the speed-of-light distance to satellites.
Starlink latency is materially improved from traditional satellite internet providers. 20ms vs 500ms. Conflating them borders on equivocation.