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

Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

pluralistic.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 332 posts

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#291

Post by oneplane »

chrisseaton wrote: post #256
oneplane wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have missed the point so many times it's hard to come up with a number... Intuit isn't a person, it didn't vote and it has no place telling the government what to do for the people. A company has no opinions, only a bottom line and in many lobbying cases a bunch a shareholders. A government isn't a company and doesn't need to have financial gain, it needs to support the collective people of the country it…

What do you think is the difference between Intuit lobbying and a representative of Intuit lobbying? If the CEO of Intuit phones their representative and says they think some change to the tax code is bad that's lobbying and that's fine to me.

It's not about what I "think" the difference is. The difference is, in fact, that a company is not a person. And a person doing something in the name of the company or as a representative of the company is not acting as a person either, but as an extension of the company.

A company is essentially a sociopath that does not have to follow a social contract, has no limited lifespan, doesn't need to eat, sleep, have shelter, and doesn't feel pain or joy. All it does is extract as much value as possible, at any cost, including joy, safely and general lives of others.

A government that panders to sociopathic wealth hoarders isn't a government, but just another company and the people in general are worse off for it.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#292

Post by jltsiren »

avalys wrote: post #222
fleddr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give a counter example here: In my country (Netherlands), the IRS itself provides the software. Once a year, you download and run it. Everything is prefilled: income from work, bank accounts, mortgages. So if you're a boring, financially stable person, the entire process is literally next -> next -> next -> submit. Filling out tax forms is not a value-add economic activity, so I have no idea why you'd insist…

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…

Sometimes large organizations are less efficient than small organizations due to bureaucracy, and sometimes they are more efficient due to economies of scale. In this case, a large country is more diverse than a small country, but it also has a better access to the necessary expertise.

Coming from a small European country, I'm familiar with a failure mode that does not exist in the federal government of the US (but can be seen in smaller states). Sometimes the government performs badly, because it would need expertise that is not available in the market. Everyone who is good at a specific thing already has a job and is not interested in getting a new one.

I believe the root issue here is that efficiency is not a fundamental value in the US in the same way it is in many European countries (I'm thinking Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and the Nordic countries). Meanwhile, decentralization is a fundamental value. Americans on the average do not want the government to be efficient, because it would require a level of centralization they would be uncomfortable with. For example, with centralized reporting, it would be reasonable to expect that 80-90% of people do not have to file taxes in any particular year, because the government already knows every relevant piece of information about them.

Another issue is that the US is already far more centralized than the EU. The federal government is a major actor, with an almost 20x bigger share of the GDP than the EU. There is an uneasy balance of power between the federal government and the states, with neither party clearly superior to the other. Nobody has an indisputable authority to change things, which I guess is another reason why American bureaucracy is so inefficient.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#293

Post by mistersquid »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #232
missblit wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

I’ve run into issues with the IRS over incorrect filings.

I am not a tax attorney or an accounting professional, but I strongly advise you to rethink your position.

Under no circumstances do you want to get audited by the IRS instead of complying with the Federal Tax Code.

Once the IRS begins its investigation, you will be obligated to pay the costs of complying with their requests, which costs may very well dwarf the costs of complying in the first place.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#294

Post by conanbatt »

whoisjuan wrote: post #103
conanbatt wrote: post #96

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...

Lobbying is a political act just like making a protest or making a news article. That is not monopoly power. But even if it were framed as monopoly power, the monopoly is from the government officials that sell their power.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#295

Post by jbluepolarbear »

mistersquid wrote: post #293
jbluepolarbear wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> I’m not doing that under any circumstances. I’d rather get audited I’ve run into issues with the IRS over incorrect filings. I am not a tax attorney or an accounting professional, but I strongly advise you to rethink your position. Under no circumstances do you want to get audited by the IRS instead of complying with the Federal Tax Code. Once the IRS begins its investigation, you will be obligated to pay the costs…

I don’t have any money. I literally lost everything I have accrued in my life in the last 18 months. That fact that I’m not at bankruptcy door is because of what little stimulus we got. So no, I’m too exhausted to deal with the IRS. If they care, they can serve me and drag me to court because I won’t comply at all.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#296

Post by nightski »

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.

Wow that's crazy, I have an accountant do my taxes each year and it's only $250. He even reviews my company's books as well.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#297

Post by bogomipz »

novok wrote: post #129
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.

Intiuit is medium-large tech, like a twitter, ebay, paypal, square, uber, etc. Also they pay crap and the work is uninteresting which is why nobody focuses on them.

They're actually fairly active in the Kubernetes world. I've watched some conference talks where they've presented on their ArgoCD platform. I could not imagine working for Intuit though. I don't know how they do it.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#298

Post by nightski »

SamBam wrote: post #217
alkonaut wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 par…

I'm not sure the money always even ends up in the hands of the politicians themselves. It's the unreasonable effectiveness of advertising. Honestly it probably mostly ends up in the hands of SV.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#299

Post by mypalmike »

perl4ever wrote: post #166
jandrese wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I always go to the forms and ignore the interview. I haven't found any other software that is practical to use in this way and has all the forms I need. I tried H&R Block's free software one year, I think, because I was mad at Intuit, but it was useless because there were big gaping holes in the functionality.

I'm curious what the big gaping holes are. I've used H&R and its predecessor, TaxCut, to do my returns for like 20 years (minus 1 or 2 years where I hired a CPA due to complicated investments and tax credits). I find it very straightforward and fast to use.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#300

Post by nybble41 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #82
mike_ivanov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying has nothing to do with free market.

That's a weird thing to say considering how lobbying is justified: As the free expression of speech by companies towards their elected representatives. So is limiting corporate speech necessary for a free market? Most free-market backers I've heard would say otherwise.

Lobbying consists of influencing either elected officials or bureaucrats to take actions on the lobbyists' behalf which no actor in a free market would be permitted to take. What needs to be limited here is not corporate speech but rather government power.
Post reply on HN