Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit • Hacker News Board

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#231

Post by dole » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

spinax wrote: post #35

cmckn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform, the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them $89.99.

H&R Block wanted to upcharge me additional $$ just to fill out a Schedule D on top of the $$ tier fee (the past few years these forms were included in that tier price). They lost a long term (10yr?) customer by trying to grift me this year. I used https://www.taxslayer.com/ instead this past year, a bit more DIY but if you've done your taxes for years and they're generally the same year after year it's not that hard…

I'll second TaxSlayer (2nd year) after being a online TurboTax user for 12+ years, desktop app user years before that, and afraid and skeptical of jumping ship and losing "history", tired of the fake delays and dialogs.

Relatively stripped down UI/UX and few "waiting" dialogs and I have to assume a good savings of clicks vs. TT. I have a relatively easy joint return with little audit risk and basically in the "generally the same year after year" boat as well.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#232

Post by jbluepolarbear » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:36 PM UTC

missblit wrote: post #139

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got totally screwed last year job wise. 2 of my employers have not reported my tax contributions to the state. I never received a W2 from one of them. TurboTax was able to find all my W2 from the HR companies, but I was unable to access those HR websites for my W2s. Because my contributions weren’t reported to the state I have to get all my W2 (luckily it was in my federal return) and resend them to the state. I ha…

You would have been able to but it'd be a bit painful: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc154 The basic process is to: 1. Contact your employer and have them send you a W2 2. If your employer does not send you your W2 by the end of February, contact the IRS and they'll send you a Form 4852 3. If you still haven't received a W2 in time to file taxes, then you can file using the Form 4852 instead 4. If you receive the W2…

I’m not doing that under any circumstances. I’d rather get audited

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#233

Post by jkhdigital » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

throwaway98211 wrote: post #130

>The Child Tax Credit is a seriously good piece of policy... Maybe in intent, but certainly not in implementation. Fine if you want to give money to the poor / people with no income, but enacting that through our tax system (designed to collect tax dollars) seems like a particularly poor proscription to achieve the ends. Here's another take (that I'm sure will be unpopular)... 'In 2021, progressives cloaked an expans…

Just like Obamacare... income taxation is the foot in the door to basically allow the government to arbitrarily meddle in the personal finances of every single citizen.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#234

Post by CRConrad » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:49 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #38

cmckn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform, the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them $89.99.

the IRS has actually partnered with the "Free File Alliance" which is a group of companies that partner with the IRS (Free tax filing for incomes Intuit is one of the members: https://freefilealliance.org/free-file-alliance-members/ https://freefilealliance.org/about/ Its a little weird. One would hope they would just send you the bill.. I filed my taxes late with an extension. I could go to the IRS site and get all…

> I could go to the IRS site and get all the documents they had filed by banks and my employeer, for me. They have that info...

As Robotbeat says, this is literally because Intuit lobbied to ban the IRS from being able to do it for you -- which is also literally what TFA is all about. YTF do people comment on stuff they obviously haven't even read?!?

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#235

Post by avalys » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #230

avalys wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question is, why isn't the federal government of the United States, a country of 330M people, as efficient and effective as the government of the Netherlands, a country of 17M people? Large organizations are less efficient than small organizations. This is true even in private enterprise. Large bloated, centralized government bureaucracies are the most inefficient of all. Part of the "classic American anti-gover…

Population size doesn't matter for taxes, yet having many different types of rules (perhaps at state level?) could indeed be a complicating factor. If that's the case, I'll take your word for it. But do hear me out once more. The dutch tax system is anything but simple. It has an extremely complex rule set. And because it is so complex, leaving the understanding of it to citizens has led to an enormous burden of proc…

I'm not talking about taxes in particular, I'm just talking about government in general.

The US federal government is 20x larger than that of the Netherlands. The US is also more economically, socially, and ethnically diverse than the Netherlands. Larger systems are harder to manage.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#236

Post by CRConrad » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #215

oneplane wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

It's not the "saying anything else", it's the listening: Sure, anyone has the right to say anything they want. The difference is that the government doesn't listen to most people -- how could they? Where would they take the time to listen to everyone; when would they get anything else done? It's not as if there's any constitutional right to be heard -- but some people and organisations, they do somehow magically find the time to listen to.

Pretending that this is just "a super-basic part of democracy everywhere" in stead of highly correlated with how much money the ones who get heard have contributed to the campaigns of the ones doing the sympathetic listening is disingenuous in the extreme.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#237

Post by briandear » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

cmckn wrote: post #5

WisNorCan wrote: post #2

Intuit 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.

For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform, the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them $89.99.

Why not ask the question why taxes are so complicated? Ted Cruz advocated for post card tax filing but everyone hated it because it would have eliminated the winners-and-losers picking that the tax code gives politicians.

According to Ted Cruz, 9 billion hours is spent on tax compliance each year.

Milton Friedman has a lot to say on the intentional complication of the tax code: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8

Tax rates should be low, deductions minimal, and compliance easy. The Laffer Curve demonstrates this value to government revenues. But the economic literacy of most people is so lacking that it always revolves into some kind of class-warfare debate.

Tangential, but related would be the UBI debate vs. welfare program.

Whatever side of the aisle you’re in when it comes to spending priorities, one thing that should be obvious is that simplification is a win for everyone except those with robust lobbying resources to fight for carve-outs.

We could spend more money with simpler, lower taxes that are applied evenly. Have a high standard deduction to protect the very poor and for every dollar over that, the government gets 10%. Simple. But the compliance industry would lose their minds. This “progressive” tax system we have is ridiculous because it isn’t progressive at all — those making money from capital gains pay less than wage-earners. Everyone should pay the same percentage regardless of the origin of funds.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#238

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #237

cmckn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform, the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them $89.99.

Why not ask the question why taxes are so complicated? Ted Cruz advocated for post card tax filing but everyone hated it because it would have eliminated the winners-and-losers picking that the tax code gives politicians. According to Ted Cruz, 9 billion hours is spent on tax compliance each year. Milton Friedman has a lot to say on the intentional complication of the tax code: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79…

> Ted Cruz advocated for post card tax filing but everyone hated it because it would have eliminated the winners-and-losers picking that the tax code gives politicians.

No, it wouldn't. Like every tax proposal, it was winners-and-losers picking, not an elimination of it. People opposed it because they didn’t like the winners and losers Cruz picked.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#239

Post by CRConrad » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 11:19 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #193

bestcoder69 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing “nationalization” to remain a dirty word (and not “privatization”) is a much bigger gift. Why should it be off the table? Does the average person even give a shit about the public/private status of Intuit? I get conservatives will complain but they will (and do) literally call ANY improvement to the IRS Communism. Is the hope that if you play language games they’ll see the light?

I guess it would be easier and better to just strangle them by simplifying the tax code, sending pre-filled returns to everyone and making a simple and accessible web app for people to file theit taxes with a few clicks. Intuit aren't alone in this scheme. There must be people who think taxes should be complex and scary, so would be against making it easy and convenient. What I wonder though is: aren't there any such…

> I guess it would be easier and better to just strangle them by simplifying the tax code, sending pre-filled returns to everyone and making a simple and accessible web app for people to file theit taxes with a few clicks.

Yes, that solution is obvious, and has been for quite a while. The problem is that Intuit et al, through their lobbying, are blocking it. So the problem that needs solving now is how to block that lobbying.

> There must be people who think taxes should be complex and scary, so would be against making it easy and convenient. What I wonder though is: aren't there any such people in the rest of the developed world where filing taxes IS simple?

Most countries' politics are a lot more sane than the USA's, so such people aren't able to exert quite the same perverse amount of power through "lobbying" -- i.e. bribery, thinly disguised as "campaign contributions" -- as in the USA. (Oh sure, most countries have at least some of that shit, in various forms. But few, on the whole, as bad as the USA.)

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#240

Post by MattSayar » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

cmckn wrote: post #5

WisNorCan wrote: post #2

Intuit 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.

For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform, the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them $89.99.

This year is the first year I've worked at a company that has stocks, ESPP plans, etc. and I'm curious what's the most effective way to file my taxes by myself if I don't use TurboTax? I've read that Credit Karma Tax (which looks like it got sold again to Cash app?) doesn't do a good job covering these scenarios.