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FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

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Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#331

Post by junar »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #316
jaguar1878 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have noted, the IRS doesn't know everything, and some things may be to your advantage to report to them. They could send you a bill and ask you to fix it, but many people wouldn't know where to look to find mistakes. For example: RSUs and NQSOs (employee stock grants) are in my experience handled extremely poorly by default. If I have RSUs vest when the stock is worth $10 a share, then I pay income tax that…

Wait, do brokerages report stock sales to the IRS?

Yes, of course.

> A broker or barter exchange must file Form 1099-B for each person: > For whom the broker has sold (including short sales) stocks, ... etc., for cash

https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099b

To elaborate on the GP comment, the issue is not whether the brokerage reports, but how they do it. You generally compute capital gain income as (sale price) - (acquisition price). If you buy a stock on the market and sell it, brokers generally report both sale price and acquisition price to you and the IRS.

But for employee stock compensation, the broker can report sale price without acquisition price to the IRS. If you don't report the acquisition price yourself, the IRS will think that it's 0, and assume your income is much higher than the real value.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#332

Post by zw123456 »

supramouse wrote: post #315
nathancahill wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government: You owe us money. It’s called taxes. Me: How much do I owe? Gov’t: You have to figure that out. Me: I just pay what I want? Gov’t: Oh, no we know exactly how much you owe. But you have to guess that number too. Me: What if I get it wrong? Gov’t: You go to prison Source: https://twitter.com/jordan_stratton/status/11181414550616719... I dig this one up every April.

you don't really go to prison unless you're going out of you way to do something really nefarious it's also super easy to setup a payment plan online now if you really mess things up

well, I am walking around free so, for sure you don't go to prison but you pay a penalty perhaps. In my case I just paid it. It was an honest mistake and they did not bust my chops over it, they did charge interest, which is stupid. But, fine, if your computer can figure it out why not just send me the bill monthly like my city government does?

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#333

Post by aceazzameen »

tzs wrote: post #40
foxyv wrote: post #7

Did my taxes this year using TurboTax like always. Sold some stocks this year and all of a sudden I am paying $90 for TurboTax "Premium" to put a couple additional entries in the 1040. What a racket. Next year I'm going to file using something else. This has gone on too long.

I used Cash App Taxes. I sold some mutual fund shares in 2021 and it handled it fine. Here's a page describing forms and situations it does not handle [1]. One thing that might annoy some people is that to login to the Cash App Taxes website you must use their mobile app. The website shows a QR code which you scan from the mobile app. It uses the approach of asking you various questions in order to figure out what fo…

I filed with them last year when it was still Credit Karma Taxes. The process was painless and my first time not filing with Turbo Tax. I was going to file with them again, but the moment I saw I needed to install an app to scan a QR code, I bailed. No thanks. I don't need their app on my devices.

So this year, I prepared my taxes with FreeTaxUSA instead. So far I love it. It required me to manually input a lot of information that was auto-imported on TT and CK, which isn't as terrible as I thought. Overall I'm finding the UX to be very clean and clear. I haven't had to Google answers to vague questions or unique situations like I had to with the others. It even caught an error that I'm having to fix with my bank, and told me exactly how to fix it. I'm very impressed with FreeTaxUSA so far. Hopefully they never sell out.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#334

Post by zw123456 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #324
ehsankia wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well known fact that the government can auto-file for most people, it's not really a secret. Many other countries do it, it's been proven to work just fine.

how could America claim to be exceptional if we just did things the same way as every other developed nation? /s

Exceptional != Best

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#335

Post by [deleted] »

pabs3 wrote: post #301
zw123456 wrote: post #271

A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on…

Are there any folks in congress who are interested in mandating the IRS switch to automatic tax returns or automated tax return form data filling?

[deleted]

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#337

Post by jimmaswell »

zw123456 wrote: post #327
Johnny555 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I thought, my SSN is on the 1099, so it should be trivial for the IRS to match them up. That's why I was surprised when he said that they only caught it during an audit.

Yup, dumb mistake on my part, so I track it better now. The point is, do I really have to do all this work tracking everything to guess which card they are hiding behind their backs. It's kinda dumb IMO.

They probably just sent you a letter asking you to pay it with a smidgen of interest and that was that, right? Probably hardly worth doing extra work to be super thorough unless it was a large amount.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#338

Post by moduspol »

zw123456 wrote: post #271

A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on…

I had the same situation once (a missed 1099) and my biggest complaint is that they waited almost a year to let me know. And of course by then it was quite late so I owed them even more money!

Even if they can't tell me what numbers they expect when I file, it seems like they could at least let me know within a few weeks if they're pretty sure I missed a 1099. Heck, I typically file at least a month early. They could let me know before April 15 and I could have just fixed it! Ugh.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#339

Post by Vespasian »

zw123456 wrote: post #296
nathancahill wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government: You owe us money. It’s called taxes. Me: How much do I owe? Gov’t: You have to figure that out. Me: I just pay what I want? Gov’t: Oh, no we know exactly how much you owe. But you have to guess that number too. Me: What if I get it wrong? Gov’t: You go to prison Source: https://twitter.com/jordan_stratton/status/11181414550616719... I dig this one up every April.

ya, so why not just send me a statement once a month, the power company does that, the cell phone company does that, the city I live in does that, etc. Just send me a statement, you made this, you get this much deduction for the other crap or whatever. No stupid W2, W4 1040, bunch of mumbo jumbo from the 1950's that a few companies are ripping us off over IMO.

That's basically how it works in Germany.

There is a formula in the law that specifies how much if your salary gets deducted every month based on specific criteria such as your marital status, your religion (yeah church taxes), whether it is your primary or secondary job etc.

That amount is calculated to be enough (a little bit to much in fact) to cover taxes for most people employed with a single job.

Unless you have extra income or deductions beyond a certain amount you don't have to file any tax return.

If you want to file one (pre filled with what they know) the government calculates what you need to pay/are owed and you have the right to dispute that.

You can use the free digitalised version of the former paper form or you can use a number of (often inexpensive) commercial programs

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#340

Post by cure »

aidangrimshaw wrote: post #269
heavyset_go wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AGPL just means that users can fork the project if they have access to older AGPL code, but CLAs that assign copyright mean that the rights holders can change the license whenever they want and make it difficult to find old AGPL code by removing repositories and scrubbing the web of it. It's entirely possible for the rights holders to say "we're going private now" and pivot the project into a for-profit business.

Do know of a better license alternative that prevents that from happening? Would be interested!

Your license choice is perfectly fine. If you do not have CLA, you have an AGPL codebase with many people owning the copyright on portions of it.

In terms of future proofing against the project "going commercial" (i.e. changing the license going forward), it doesn't get much better than this, because pretty much all the copyright holders would need to agree on a license change.

Ideally, the bulk of the copyright does not reside with a small number of authors - the more authors, and the more evenly the copyright is spread among them, the better.

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