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How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

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Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#241

Post by talmand »

guelo wrote: post #202
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #118

Couple of notes. 1) The IRS itself gets most of the tax advice wrong that it gives out to taxpayers 2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationships you have with your government. If you ask me, a government representative should come to your office and you should pay him in cash, not hide and automate taxes so that they disappear. 3) There is a difference between a simple tax system and a tax system tha…

1) Source? 2-3) The idea that it should be painful to pay your taxes so that people won't want to pay their taxes is a political idea, not a technocratic idea. But I don't give a shit about your politics. Keep your politics out of my government services. Political meddling by ideologues is what makes government services so awful. Whatever the government is required to do after the law is passed should be done in as f…

He's not quite correct in saying "most", but they do give bad advice a large amount of the time.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7492730#.UVHtJBkuF7c

I would agree with your statement about politics and whatnot.

As for "sole source"; yes, you can have anyone prepare your taxes but the IRS still says yes or no to what they were provided. If the IRS decides that your preparer was wrong then that's where it might get interesting. I read it as saying there are possible issues with having one agency having both judgement and collection powers. It's much like the complaint lately about prosecutor offices benefiting from seizure laws leading to obvious abuses, such as the attempted hotel seizure in NY I believe.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#242

Post by axusgrad »

imjared wrote: post #79
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever been to the DMV?

DMV in the District had a pretty long line but was fine otherwise. The biggest problem I saw was people who had not read the provided information/required materials in advance of coming then started arguing or pleading their case.

You get problems when the employees cannot interpret the rules correctly, though. For example, proof of residency can be utility bill from the last 60 days, OR a DC property tax bill, and they reject a current DC property tax bill that wasn't issued in the last 60 days.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#243

Post by talmand »

olau wrote: post #160
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #118

Couple of notes. 1) The IRS itself gets most of the tax advice wrong that it gives out to taxpayers 2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationships you have with your government. If you ask me, a government representative should come to your office and you should pay him in cash, not hide and automate taxes so that they disappear. 3) There is a difference between a simple tax system and a tax system tha…

To me, it seems you're attacking a strawman sauced up in government-is-evil hyperbole. The tax system in Denmark is 100% automatic for almost everything. Most people don't have to do anything at all. Once a year, you get a letter or email asking you to check the numbers, you can then go in and add extra information if needed, and that's it. If you discover an error back in time, you can fix that too and get money bac…

Are we saying that since the system apparently works in Denmark it therefore works everywhere and that there never be any government-is-evil considerations?

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#244

Post by FireBeyond »

harshreality wrote: post #52
seivan wrote: post #6

Hmm. How good is Turbo Tax, I mean I can tell it's horribly coded, but does it have automated features/recommendations that will help you earn more? Or is it basically what the tax system does in Swede/Finland etc?

Poorly coded in terms of usability, I'm guessing? I think the workflow for modifying already entered (or skipped) parts of the tax return is lacking. It's difficult to keep track of navigation for more complex returns. Turbotax should have a tree-like navigation pane to the side, showing status icons for each section. I don't know if it's horribly coded though. One test would be how quickly they could add the navigat…

The workflow for amended returns is absolutely, utterly, horrific.

If I recall correctly, it involves loading your existing return, making changes, and at some point (only vaguely defined in documentation), changing something different (err, this is a very bad description, obviously - but suffice to say, as someone who has no issue navigating complex systems, the times I've done it, it's been a horrible and fraught experience).

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#245

Post by khuey »

itafroma wrote: post #85
JimWestergren wrote: post #19

Stats about tax declaration from Sweden last year: Via internet: 19,9% Via PIN code: 20,1% Via telephone: 12,5% SMS: 6,6% Smartphone app: 2,3% Total: 60,4% filed electronically The rest sent in papers via the mail. (the old method) Source: http://www.skatteverket.se/download/18.71004e4c133e23bf6db80... Personally I have filed via the internet since 2005 both private and for my company.

How people file isn't a problem in the US: in 2010, 70%[1] of tax filers (~90 million people) filed electronically and that number has almost certainly increased since. The issue in the article is whether the IRS (our federal taxing agency) should be allowed to file returns on behalf of citizens (i.e., do most of the work for them). [1]: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42275764/

I wouldn't consider "how" people file a problem. I choose to file on paper still, and will until I can upload my tax data from my machine directly to the government's computer without passing through some third-party provider that I don't trust to keep my data safe.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#246

Post by talmand »

tempaccount9473 wrote: post #195
ScottWhigham wrote: post #40

To those saying "We should be more like Sweden/Finland!", I'd ask whether those countries have a tax system that is also based on using tax credits and deductions to lower your tax due? I don't know the tax codes in those countries but my guess is that, because they use the tax entity-created system, they do not have such a complicated tax code as the US. In the US, you have two sides of this: (1) the IRS, and (2) CP…

> If the IRS helps you save $5000 [via a tax deduction] that you would have otherwise paid, then the IRS loses $5000 Many Americans have a (one-sided) adversarial relationship with the IRS, thinking it is some kind of evil entity that only exists to financially destroy everyone in America. But the IRS only exists to implement the tax code enacted by the "representatives of the people" (ha), the US Congress. When the…

You have to understand that to many people, any money that the government has been unable to obtain from you is money "lost" to the system or is listed as a "cost." These people would disagree with your statement that the IRS didn't lose that $5000. To them the IRS most certainly did lose that money.

To expand on your thought that people view the IRS as the evil entity. They are just misguided, the true enemy is the overly complicated tax code that is rife with abuse by many people within the IRS, Congress, and the private sector to the detriment of the majority.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#247

Post by mgkimsal »

cletus wrote: post #236

There are two things that disturb me about the US government: 1. As a whole, it seems to operate on the assumption of guilt; and 2. It seems bought and paid for by special interests, pork barrelling and so forth. As a foreigner I of course have foreign retirement and bank accounts. If they total more than $10,000 (at any point in the last calendar year) you need to report them. This is FBAR (Foreign Bank Account Repo…

As a US person who visits other countries, I get scared about making a mistake in immigration issues. Going through customs in a country where you don't speak the language (well or at all) is scary.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#248

Post by [deleted] »

akadien wrote: post #128
harshreality wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property tax encourages those who aren't using a property to sell it. Real Estate ownership is already tracked (you can argue it shouldn't be, but that would upend the real estate system). And unlike cash sitting in a bank account, it's already fairly common to tax real estate. If someone wants to keep 5 houses and leave 4 of them empty at any given time, as a status symbol, shouldn't they be taxed punitively? Real e…

> If someone wants to keep 5 houses and leave 4 of them empty at any given time, as a status symbol, shouldn't they be taxed punitively? No.

[deleted]

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#249

Post by ScottWhigham »

mjn wrote: post #139
ScottWhigham wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what my guess was. In that environment then, a government system clearly works well. I wish I had stats about how many US tax returns have deductions - I'd assume it's close to 100%.

It's actually 35%, if you don't count people who file with just the standard deduction. While technically a "deduction", the standard deduction is pretty dead-simple to compute. It only gets more complicated if you're taking itemized deductions, and that's about 1/3 of taxpayers (though that's still a high proportion of itemized filers compared to many countries). Source: http://taxfoundation.org/article/most-america…

Excellent - I should've chosen "itemized" and then, of course, the percentage is lower than 100%. Thanks for the link - good info.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#250

Post by matrix »

cletus wrote: post #236

There are two things that disturb me about the US government: 1. As a whole, it seems to operate on the assumption of guilt; and 2. It seems bought and paid for by special interests, pork barrelling and so forth. As a foreigner I of course have foreign retirement and bank accounts. If they total more than $10,000 (at any point in the last calendar year) you need to report them. This is FBAR (Foreign Bank Account Repo…

I'm in the same situation (literally). The FBAR penalties are even worse than you describe. It's a case of well-intentioned legislation with unintended consequences. The extreme penalties were intended to hit people with offshore tax shelters, but instead it is mostly a source of revenue for tax lawyers.

This is, unfortunately, true of the US tax code in general...

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