461–470 of 589 posts
In my country I don't need to do anything. They calculate the tax, and if I owe anything extra, or am owed a return, I get mail about it. But there are downsides too, we also have free healthcare and the last school shooting was more than 80 years ago.
On the upside, if the tax-preparation industry is destroyed or severely diminished, it would make it easier to reform/simplify the tax code at a later date should a future government be so inclined. On the downside... no way would I use a tax preparation system provided by the IRS. It's bound to be a UX nightmare, like all government software, there's an obvious conflict of interest (the IRS has no reason to help fin…
This sort of attitude isn't productive, the IRS is not out to get you and they already know how much you make (unless your income is all cash you made from selling things out of the back of your truck).
> A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem," said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. "That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans." Extraordinary that he could say that sentence with what I assume was a straight face.
On the upside, if the tax-preparation industry is destroyed or severely diminished, it would make it easier to reform/simplify the tax code at a later date should a future government be so inclined. On the downside... no way would I use a tax preparation system provided by the IRS. It's bound to be a UX nightmare, like all government software, there's an obvious conflict of interest (the IRS has no reason to help fin…
On the upside, if the tax-preparation industry is destroyed or severely diminished, it would make it easier to reform/simplify the tax code at a later date should a future government be so inclined. On the downside... no way would I use a tax preparation system provided by the IRS. It's bound to be a UX nightmare, like all government software, there's an obvious conflict of interest (the IRS has no reason to help fin…
>I'd rather not give them any more visibility than I have to into my personal finances. They already kinda have all the visibility they want. Remember the whole joke about the IRS - "we know exactly how much you owe, but we're not going to tell you that amount because you have to figure it out yourself, and if your number doesn't match ours, you could go to jail for tax fraud". If you use anything but cash for everyt…
> A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem," said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. "That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans." Extraordinary that he could say that sentence with what I assume was a straight face.
If you can not lie and twist the facts you will not become politician / spokesman / etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Makes you wonder why there wasn't an open source tool for this to begin with. Why did nobody feel the urge to make this?
I would imagine because of the self barter nature of open source. Open source only works when the group that can make the tools are also the group that uses them. So they are bartering with themselves. That's how they "pay" for it. But contributing back to the shared pool of resources Taxpayers can't contribute back to the pool that software engineers use. The people who build it will not be "compensated" with other…
* - It's not something that I'm concerned about but I think some skepticism of the government is healthy if easily addressed.
The steelman case for opposing "auto-filing" or having the IRS provide tax preparation is that the intention of requiring everyone to file is that all citizens should be directly aware of the amount of taxes being assessed and the complexity of the tax code itself, with the objective of making people oppose legislative increases in the complexity of the tax code, and to make tax increases more intrusive so that legis…
On the upside, if the tax-preparation industry is destroyed or severely diminished, it would make it easier to reform/simplify the tax code at a later date should a future government be so inclined. On the downside... no way would I use a tax preparation system provided by the IRS. It's bound to be a UX nightmare, like all government software, there's an obvious conflict of interest (the IRS has no reason to help fin…
> no way would I use a tax preparation system provided by the government. As someone who has used government-provided tax preparation systems my entire life, I'm curious what your threat model here is exactly.
But that's fine. That would mean that TurboTax would have to provide value by way of minimizing what you owe to the IRS instead of being the easiest way to navigate a complicated process with legal consequences if you make a mistake.
They should open source this. I would actually contribute to making this usable.