Cant belive the average person spends 140$ seems way too high, free options exist for so many americans. FreeTaxUsa works great, even if it isnt as easy as turbotax
IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
571–580 of 589 posts
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did OLT again this year. Due in part to how many click throughs they require if you aren't paying or doing state taxes through them, and due in part to significant personal distractions this year, I didn't notice that I actually hadn't filed until after April 17th, despite finishing everything but the final click-throughs in early February. Fortunately I'm owed so shouldn't be paying any penalties for filing late.…
The deadline was the 18th this year, so you made it just in time!
No, I didn't. I filed in May after going to the "where's my refund" IRS page and getting an error.
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#573Taxpayers are in an adversarial relationship with the IRS. If the IRS then makes the tax filing software, how could taxpayers be sure it would provide the maximum benefit? The IRS would be incentivized to refund less money, etc.
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#574For what it is worth, even with my medium-complex tax return I have had great results with freetaxusa.com for the past few years. The first couple of times we used it we ran the taxes through TurboTax and FreeTax at the same time and due to better UI the FreeTax version was faster and less confusing. That said, at the end of the process after entering all of the same information in the same places the TurboTax one di…
I go with them too. Everytime this comes up though I post this https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/ There's many nice and cheap options out there. Please, if you value basic democracy, don't give money to Intuit or TurboTax - not a dollar, not a penny. But do click on their paid ads whenever you see them and just close out after the page load. That company needs to be dismantled brick by brick, byte b…
> But do click on their paid ads whenever you see them and just close out after the page load.
Might I suggest using AdNauseam instead? It's essentially just automating that in the background.
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
The income bracket stuff is so crazy. It's just another way to redistribute wealth, but that's not palatable to the US public so it takes weird forms like this. It would be much more practical to abandon these piecemeal, market-distorting interventions and instead just do some smallish UBI. The money saved on overhead alone would probably be enormous.
> just do some smallish UBI Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the B in UBI). I agree that we should do away with market-distorting interventions in places that aren't strategically critical to the nation as a whole (like food production), but politicians are woefully inadequate to the task of resisting the urge to meddle.
> Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the B in UBI).
Like it or not, the term UBI has been overloaded in common usage to refer to both forms. (Wikipedia notes that sometimes a "full basic income" vs. a "partial basic income" is used to disambiguate the two forms.)
"Basic" in this sense just means that there is a set "basis" from which income can only increase; it does not necessarily have anything to do with "basic" living expenses, although many proposals do tie that particular connection.
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
> just do some smallish UBI Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the B in UBI). I agree that we should do away with market-distorting interventions in places that aren't strategically critical to the nation as a whole (like food production), but politicians are woefully inadequate to the task of resisting the urge to meddle.
> Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the B in UBI). Like it or not, the term UBI has been overloaded in common usage to refer to both forms. (Wikipedia notes that sometimes a "full basic income" vs. a "partial basic income" is used to disambiguate the two forms.) "Basic" in this sense just means that there is a set "basis" fro…
Thank you; I was unaware of this common parlance. I understood that UBI implicitly meant something that one could live off of.
In that case, I prefer something like a Friedmanesque negative income tax, versus the absurd scenario of, say, a pauper and a millionaire both receiving the same basic income; or indeed over the existing absurdities of the means-tested welfare system, with all of its perverse incentives.
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'?
Revert to existing experience?
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#578Is it a honeypot or a way for regular citizens to sign up to be audited?
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Look up the cost of the healthcare.gov website project* People complain about government contractor costs for a reason *Last I checked it was north of a billion in 2014 dollars
Healthcare.gov on the backend had to interface with systems from a bunch of different government agencies and companies. Many of those systems had not been designed to interface to other agency and company systems. They all had their own APIs and data formats.
That all greatly increased the complexity of the project.
An IRS e-filing system would just be adding a public interface for taxpayers to a system they already have.
Re: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
The income bracket stuff is so crazy. It's just another way to redistribute wealth, but that's not palatable to the US public so it takes weird forms like this. It would be much more practical to abandon these piecemeal, market-distorting interventions and instead just do some smallish UBI. The money saved on overhead alone would probably be enormous.
Take a moment to look outside of your borders. In the UK we have a mostly progressive income tax system with various tax brackets, tax free allowances up to 12k GBP, claw backs of said allowance over incomes of a certain amount, national insurance taxation, student loan repayments, etc... The majority of UK citizens file no paperwork with HMRC (equivalent to the IRS) and never have a reason to contact HMRC. The major…
It feels like you are arguing against a point I didn't make. I was responding to this section from the parent
"it'll be much harder to restrict benefits only to specific income brackets, but it would be much simpler and cheaper for taxpayers."
Also to "Take a moment to look outside of your borders.", I'm a German citizen where my dad is a retired tax officer and Iia business degree which involved accounting and taxation. I'm familiar with some taxation outside the US. If I weren't, there'd already have been dozens of other posts here describing the better tax filing solution in every country.