451–460 of 610 posts
I know, I know, there’s so many dark patterns in TurboTax that it’s cliche to point them out… …but man, this was a particularly egregious example I came across this year. https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW You can pay for TurboTax using your refund…with an additional $39 processing fee . That is just wild.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. The IRS definitely does not know how much I owe each year. However, they do have an estimate and the vast majority of people would accept this estimate. So I think it's reasonable to suggest it ought to be provided. I think the strongest counter-argument against this approach is in regards to bad actors and who discloses first. If you're thinking about hiding income and the first step is the government telli…
"Estimate" implies someone is trying to... estimate something. The IRS has partial information. They don't have anything approaching something that anyone could reasonably call an estimate, and this isn't just an example of HN pedantry, it's an important distinction. They know some of your income, but not all of it. Your 1099 income for the year is getting filed by your clients at the same time you're filing it, so a…
I agree, this won't work for a big class of people. It won't work for me. But it will work for the majority of tax filers who don't have a 1099 and who don't file a schedule A, B, C, D ...
My tax return last year was a half inch thick, printed out. I had to file on paper. I very much understand that this doesn't work for everyone. But it works for most people.
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…
- they fill out their taxes with rough estimates,
- the IRS helpfully corrects their errors, and sends the form back
- they sign the corrected form, send it back
- the IRS accepts the second round.
This is basically the same "pre-filled" workflow as every other developed country. The difference is that we have a first round where you put in a semi-plausible effort to placate the tax preparation lobby.
Has anyone with a normal job (not self-employed, regular paycheck from a company registered with the IRS) ever been fined etc for this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The central problem is the refusal of US governments (state & federal) to pay people money to do things they want to encourage rather than give them tax credits and whatnot.
Taxes shouldn’t be used to get people to do things or not do things. Taxes should be used only to fund the essential services of the government: common defense, a legal system to enforce contracts, and that’s about it. When taxes are used as a means of control, that’s totalitarian. Tax policy should always be neutral.
It's too easy to make a company go bankrupt with LLC, so taxes are the only way. Unless you have a better idea? (I once had a libertarian explain to me the owners/investors should be liable for externalities, and in this case, taxes shouldn't control for it. I couldn't really disagree, but even staunch communists understand the issue with that).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is the system still this backwards? Intuit lobbying hard to keep tax rules complex.
Intuit isn’t the problem. Politicians are. See Milton Friedman on this subject. A complicated tax code is used to reward and punish people. The tax code was complex long before Intuit came around. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8
But the US is unique in the developed world as making filing taxes hell even if you don’t try to minmax them, and that is primarily due to tax filing companies lobbying against the IRS doing what everybody else does (and secondarily due to the GOP very much wanting filing taxes to be as painful and error prone as possible, and for it to be as expensive as possible for the IRS).
What my local IRS did is sensible default. Employment income are submitted electronically to my IRS from most employers. Deductions and reliefs are automatically factored in if it relates to other government services (e.g. reliefs for child).
What I love most is for information that they don't have information on, such as deductible expenses for rental income, they suggest a default of 15% expenses where we don't have to provide any proof or documentation. It is a 15% deduction over the rental income that's just given to you. Of course, we can challenge it if we feel we should have higher deductions, providing them with the necessary documents.
I know, I know, there’s so many dark patterns in TurboTax that it’s cliche to point them out… …but man, this was a particularly egregious example I came across this year. https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW You can pay for TurboTax using your refund…with an additional $39 processing fee . That is just wild.
I like how the content and actions/buttons are in the opposite order too.
I mean, ideally the buttons would be immediately below the corresponding content.
But if both buttons are going to be at the bottom, I can see arguments for either order.
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…
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…
This is literally how it works here in the Netherlands. Every year I get a reminder, log into an app with my government ID , click "next" a few times while checking the numbers and submit. It literally takes 2 minutes if you don't have anything to adjust. does the US have a thing like DigiD?
Gods no, can you imagine the US having a national, universal, secure digital ID?
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…
Most people in my country never have to file tax returns. Their taxes are deducted at source (by their employer).