121–130 of 304 posts
This is why I always pirate TurboTax and deleted my Mint years ago. Fuck intuit. Oh and before someone asks me why I feel comfortable doing that security wise...I do it on an airgapped machine and print the return out and mail it in. Ezpz
Also why I was disappointed when Intuit bought Credit Karma. I will never use Turbo Tax, just out of principle. I cannot support a company like that.
I'm sorry... you can't say you're trying to save us from tax filing while simultaneously having a tax form that would put a blank excel spreadsheet to shame.
California and the federal government's willingness to write complex, byzantine tax rules, is ultimately what keeps intuit in business.
Since I’ve not seen it mentioned yet, https://www.freetaxusa.com/ . Used it the last few years to do my taxes, which include investment and self employment income. No complaints. Intuit’s stuff would charge quite a bit for my “complex” taxes. They charge a couple bucks to file state taxes, which gives me a bit of confidence they’re not making money by selling my info to someone.
Intuit is such an evil company. Now that I've moved to Germany, I know what it feels like not to have to file every year (I still have to for the US but it's trivial now due to FIEC). There's nobody hounding you here, no stress regarding your taxes unless you're filing for a return or have extenuating circumstances, and even then there's a government-provided online portal for direct communication with the Finanzamt…
Why assign all the blame to Intuit? > They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a decade to pledge in writing not to adopt California’s innovation or develop any other offerings that threatened their business model. I think the IRS deserves much of the blame for yielding to Intuit's persuasion. Every American should be upset with both Intuit and the IRS.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I found out my kid's friend gave them $1000 to jump off a bridge, I think I'd be equally mad at both of them.
Sure, but in this case these are adults and they know exactly what they are doing. Intuit didn't force them by gunpoint. The politicians have agency here and are ultimately responsible. They chose to put their donors over their voters. And now they are trying to frame this as though they are hapless victims who tried to save the nation? No.
That doesn't mean the people running Intuit are worse than the politicians making decisions about the IRS, it's just easier to make a singular judgement about their organization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why assign all the blame to Intuit? > They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a decade to pledge in writing not to adopt California’s innovation or develop any other offerings that threatened their business model. I think the IRS deserves much of the blame for yielding to Intuit's persuasion. Every American should be upset with both Intuit and the IRS.
I'm just upset with the IRS. The IRS officers hold a position of public trust. Intuit does not.
Whereas the IRS, and every other government agency, is supposedly trying to help society or at least not hurt it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do private tax prep companies have an argument they advance about why automatic filing is a bad idea? Or is it just pure behind scenes lobbying?
My understanding is the two pro arguments for manual filing are: If taxpayers aren't forced to confront the details of their tax payments every time they do a filing, they're less likely to complain about high taxes (this comes with the implication that high taxes are inherently bad, which depends on your political leaning) Taxpayers may just accept the automatic deduction without realising they're being overcharged…
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We don't mention IQ around here. It explains too much. Too much to handle. Enjoy your downvotes.
Hmm, I would actually love (genuinely) to hear more. My impression is that standardized testing of Intelligence Quotient explains way way less than popular imagination & movies think. Studies like these [1] [2] get a lot of newspaper time, but they're largely rebuked on methodological or overreach grouns, and honestly, there's sweeping generalizations and then there's saying "Anything from California is automatically…
It's also intuitive. The whole path to college, at least for hard sciences, partially select for IQ. And college education correlates with higher income.
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Yeah let's run the country like Alabama instead. They're doing well! /s
Maybe we should let each state run the way they see fit... you know kind of like how the Constitution assumed things should be done until the Commerce Clause was used by the Federal Government to hammer every state into submission.
This is why I always pirate TurboTax and deleted my Mint years ago. Fuck intuit. Oh and before someone asks me why I feel comfortable doing that security wise...I do it on an airgapped machine and print the return out and mail it in. Ezpz
Also why I was disappointed when Intuit bought Credit Karma. I will never use Turbo Tax, just out of principle. I cannot support a company like that.