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IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

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Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#91

Post by tcmart14 »

swozey wrote: post #60
phone8675309 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your company fucked up by not taking withholding from the bonus.

I do get a 20% bonus at this company and I think it is attributed to that. It was my first time getting that bonus. What do I even do here? Talk to HR? I don't think I can do anything and just suck it up and pay it and expect it next year? I dunno.

It might be worth a conversation with HR and reveiwing your tax withholdings just to make sure there is not an error and misunderstanding as to how your company or the HR software is handling it. I ran into a somewhat similar situation early on at my current job, but we were able to find an issue and correct before I got hit with a nasty surprise at tax time.

My issue was that my with-holdings and everything looked fine. But I was not having any federal taxes taken out on my paychecks for federal with-holdings. Turned out to be a software issue that the company who makes it was able to correct.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#92

Post by vundercind »

londons_explore wrote: post #88
yndoendo wrote: post #53

I would argue that having to file taxes through a 3rd party accountant or service is not only forced commerce but also broken glass economics. Looks like it helps the economy by creating jobs but the job is redundant and does not create anything of value. Where are crimes more likely to occur, a city with 10,000 or 1 million? Where are financial crimes more likely to occur, people that make $10,000 a year or people t…

Conventional wisdom is that if one can fund the IRS with one extra dollar, and they use that dollar to collect two dollars more taxes (from evaders), than that was a good way to spend taxpayers money. Many economists don't agree though. If you care about economic success of the country, the goal isn't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is to make the citizens wealthier in real terms. Effort your citizens p…

Very easy to draw extremely wrong conclusions from this line of thought without factoring in the long-term cost of declining trust in the rule of law.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#93

Post by pooper »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90
giantg2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please provide examples of Democrats undoing good policy/legislation just because it was passed by a prior Republican administration." It's going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of what was "good". That's subjective, and the very basis for why there are separate parties.

> going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of what was "good" I'd expand this to examples of either party undoing legislation the other championed and passed. It's exceedingly rare, in large part by design.

I still hope we can undo the "permanent" tax cuts of 2017 at some point.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#94

Post by [deleted] »

pooper wrote: post #93
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of what was "good" I'd expand this to examples of either party undoing legislation the other championed and passed. It's exceedingly rare, in large part by design.

I still hope we can undo the "permanent" tax cuts of 2017 at some point.

[deleted]

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#95

Post by swozey »

tcmart14 wrote: post #91
swozey wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get a 20% bonus at this company and I think it is attributed to that. It was my first time getting that bonus. What do I even do here? Talk to HR? I don't think I can do anything and just suck it up and pay it and expect it next year? I dunno.

It might be worth a conversation with HR and reveiwing your tax withholdings just to make sure there is not an error and misunderstanding as to how your company or the HR software is handling it. I ran into a somewhat similar situation early on at my current job, but we were able to find an issue and correct before I got hit with a nasty surprise at tax time. My issue was that my with-holdings and everything looked f…

Thanks! I'll speak with them. I know everything is through Bamboo/whatever software nowadays so I wasn't sure if they really had any control/input on these things.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#96

Post by codegeek »

jjcm wrote: post #5
CharlieDigital wrote: post #2

> Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), an accountant and senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, told Axios in April that he wants to go "way beyond Direct File," calling for a "self-populating form." > > "Why in the heck should you have to fill out your return when the government has all the information. They know what's on your W-2 form before you do. They know what's on your 1099 … Do you know how many m…

This was one of my favorite things about living in Australia as an American. Taxes were clicking a checkbox and saying, "I agree". It was incredible how simple it was.

I lived in HongKong for about 2 years a while ago. It was the same there. They calculate everything and you just have to sign it.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#97

Post by latency-guy2 »

vundercind wrote: post #92
londons_explore wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conventional wisdom is that if one can fund the IRS with one extra dollar, and they use that dollar to collect two dollars more taxes (from evaders), than that was a good way to spend taxpayers money. Many economists don't agree though. If you care about economic success of the country, the goal isn't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is to make the citizens wealthier in real terms. Effort your citizens p…

Very easy to draw extremely wrong conclusions from this line of thought without factoring in the long-term cost of declining trust in the rule of law.

Only if you're under the false premise of the people serving the government rather than the government serves the people.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#98

Post by gottorf »

yndoendo wrote: post #53

I would argue that having to file taxes through a 3rd party accountant or service is not only forced commerce but also broken glass economics. Looks like it helps the economy by creating jobs but the job is redundant and does not create anything of value. Where are crimes more likely to occur, a city with 10,000 or 1 million? Where are financial crimes more likely to occur, people that make $10,000 a year or people t…

> Where are crimes more likely to occur, a city with 10,000 or 1 million?

A city of 10,000 may very well have a higher rate of crime. In terms of your analogy, consider my lawn man, who only takes cash for his services. I know he's not taking in millions of dollars a year (or even hundreds of thousands), but I also strongly suspect that he does not report all of his income.

Same goes for every cash-only business I know.

> I rather have a well staff IRS going after those that evade paying their taxes, probability speaking the wealthy.

I'd rather the tax code be simplified so that nobody has access to loopholes, not just the wealthy. Not much you can do to hide, for example, a land value tax.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#99

Post by demosthanos »

whimsicalism wrote: post #50
nly wrote: post #28

As a Brit it's baffling that this is even an issue. I filed my taxes online with HMRC for free this year (we call it Self Assessment), it took 20 minutes, and I received a 4 figure refund in ~2 weeks directly in to my bank account.

the tax difficulty in the US is overstated, we have plenty of services that will let you do it for 20 minutes for free. the most popular one is obnoxious and tries to upsell you often, but there are alternatives and you don't need to pay

I finally tried FreeTaxUSA this past year based on recommendations on HN and it was a huge breath of fresh air compared to TurboTax! They treat you like a person and not a wallet, and it was also just way smoother and easier to understand than TurboTax's nightmarish interface.

Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season

#100

Post by giantg2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90
giantg2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please provide examples of Democrats undoing good policy/legislation just because it was passed by a prior Republican administration." It's going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of what was "good". That's subjective, and the very basis for why there are separate parties.

> going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of what was "good" I'd expand this to examples of either party undoing legislation the other championed and passed. It's exceedingly rare, in large part by design.

I was mostly focused on the policy part of their comment. A lot of the changes come based on a level or two removed. You generally don't see laws fully flip flopping. Instead it's quite common for someone to get appointed and then their decisions are the ones that change policies (especially internal policies at various agencies). SCOTUS, both now and in the past is a good example of the external law/policies changing based on interpretation. But yeah, actual repeal of laws is very rare.
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