561–570 of 589 posts
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I would. They already know how much I need to pay them/how much they owe me. It should be as simple as a text message I reply “y/n” to.
> It should be as simple as a text message I reply “y/n” to I'm curious, what happens in your scenario if you reply 'no'?
If the federal government really wanted to save money on tax collection, improve the accuracy of tax collection, and drive the tax preparation industry out of business which would save every person and company significant money, then the federal government would just simplify the tax code. Any high school graduate should be smart enough to file their own taxes. That this is not true today is simply insane. For tax in…
Reducing the burden for those filing their taxes is nice, but an effect of simplifying the tax code that I am more interested in is that it restricts the power of the government (and so the reduces the attractiveness of lobbying politicians). The complexity provides opportunities for lobbyists to design rules that distort markets in their favour.
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On some counts, he is not wrong. It will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Those billions of dollars will be well spent, and may be a net 0 cost for taxpayers after the savings on eFiling. This is a revocation of the license to print money by the tax prep industry.
Billions of dollars is a massive overestimate. It will indeed cost dozens of millions, but billions? Come on. We're not building the F-35 here.
That's true -- one potential upside of the IRS plan is that an online tax submission site cannot constantly crash into the ocean.
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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?
https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ It's just a bit too much grunt work to make something that lots of people really want to use. Tax codes change very year, there are 50 states in the US with different tax codes, it's a lot of work to review contributions (are you a tax lawyer familiar with all 50 states ...) Lots of successful open source projects are started by one person, who spends a few years making somethin…
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…
The IRS doesn't receive a cut of the taxes they collect, so I don't see the conflict. They've been known to contact people who overpayed so they could send a check.
If the IRS system is found to be negligently ignoring valid deductions, that'll cause a hullabaloo picked up on by politicians. Things should change.
If Turbo Tax is found to ignore valid deductions, they'll lose a small portion of users who follow the news and know about equally-priced alternatives. Chances are, they'll keep on trucking just fine.
>and I'd rather not give them any more visibility than I have to into my personal finances.
What kind of information do you think an online form would collect that wouldn't already be on the tax forms you submit today?
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The tax code can't ever be simplified... simplification is effectively equivalent to eliminating all the various tax breaks that people are eligible for. A simple (perhaps the simplest) one sentence tax code is "everyone pays 10% of gross income"... this is considered regressive. As you add to the tax code to make it less painful, it grows more complicated. Some large fraction of the population effectively pays no fe…
You can make a progressive simple tax. The problem is not progressive taxation, the complexity comes in when government attempts social engineering via the tax code by incentivize behavior they deem "good" and penalizing behavior they deem bad i.e tax credits for EV's , children, different taxes for married vs unmarried persons, etc etc
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I know in Vietnam, they kind of do this too. Employers pay employee tax directly from the paychecks and it is based on salary. So a lot of the companies report that their employees make less, or they pay the employee part of their salary in cash (if it a cash business). I'm curious how you know they aren't cheating you somehow? Also, how could their numbers be off (high/low)? In the US, there are all sorts of 'deduct…
> I'm curious how you know they aren't cheating you somehow? How do we know that now, in the US? I don't know the details of tax calculations; I get money deducted from my paychecks, I pay a website so I can copy information from many confusing forms onto one confusing form, and then I get some money. It's inscrutable to most people. And frankly, the for-profit system is currently cheating us, so...
Tax laws are insanely complex. Even if you hire an accountant, chances are they are going to miss some deductions or not optimize things perfectly for you. Especially given their whole business model revolves around getting as many clients as they can and being overly busy just a few times a year.
If you really want to be sure, you have to learn this stuff yourself. There are a lot more people willing to take money from you than there are to help you keep it.
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If they're single, have only W-2 income, and have no children, then maybe... Just the child tax credit for 2022 requires filing an additional schedule 8812 (which is somehow referred to in some places as schedule 8) and in order to complete schedule 8812 you have to choose the correct worksheet and fill that in, but not file it. All of that results in a single credit value which is 1 line on the form 1040. This is no…
That is horrible indeed but I guess it is unavoidably so - you can't effectively have n-level nested if-else and lookups on a paper without making it complicated. Translated into code, it should become much simpler with progressive inputs/filtering.
You could just say something like "multiply the number of dependents entered previously on form 1040 by $2000, enter value on line X" and you'd still have a child tax credit and the vast majority of people who claim it would see no difference other than taking significantly less time to figure out the amount of their child tax credit. By the time you get to the child tax credit line on form 1040 you've already written all your dependents and their social security numbers right at the beginning of form 1040.
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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?
https://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ It's just a bit too much grunt work to make something that lots of people really want to use. Tax codes change very year, there are 50 states in the US with different tax codes, it's a lot of work to review contributions (are you a tax lawyer familiar with all 50 states ...) Lots of successful open source projects are started by one person, who spends a few years making somethin…
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That's fair, though ChatGPT did better than my googling in trying to figure out what I need to file for my LLC. > Kentucky Single Member Limited Liability Company Income Tax Return: As a sole proprietorship LLC, your business income and expenses are reported on your personal tax return (Form 1040), Schedule C. However, Kentucky requires you to file a separate state tax return for your LLC income. You will need to com…
I hired an independent accountant a few years ago who came recommended and had great reviews. I spent more time preparing and delivering documentation for her than I'd spent doing taxes in Turbo Tax. No new insights about tax savings or anything else distinguishable from my Turbo Tax filings came from this. However, she was very excited about my explanation of how a Mega Backdoor Roth works since she apparently hadn'…