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Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 64 posts

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#21
I was going to select H&R Block Online but that's not an option, guess I could select other but when I think probably a lot of people use it, it should be a poll option.

Why do we use it? Simple, TurboTax Online _still_ in _2014_ says my system is not supported. I run Chrome on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

H&R Block Online is just fine with my system, doesn't complain and works great, we've used it for six years, on Ubuntu.

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#22

Up until now, TurboTax. Now, CPA. Having assets in other states that don't recognize same-sex marriages just makes things too complicated; it's no longer "married filing jointly."

There was an interesting series of articles last year about how TurboTax/Intuit & other groups opposed a simple/clean "pre-fill" tax return arrangement

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-...

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/26/175332655/what-would-the-u-s-b...

--

http://theweek.com/article/index/241919/why-turbotax-tried-t...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonardburman/2013/04/15/the-tax...

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4150900/intuit-lobbies-aga...

Intuit's statement on the matter: http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/621241-intuit-state...

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#23
post #15

It's a shame ReadyReturn[1] is so nerfed (due to intense lobbying from Intuit) - as otherwise it'd be pretty great. 1: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/readyreturn/ A federally-based solution for this would be ideal; the government is already well-aware of the relevant data. The only reason we have to do any work at all is because of the bizarre vagaries and loopholes of the tax code (and the gigantic amount of lobbying from t…

Can you please elaborate a bit on the imposed constraints that nerf it?

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#24
I very much like OnLine Taxes; have been a customer of theirs for four years now. My experiences with their customer service have been great (this matters most to me), and they're very cost efficient. You must be willing to put up with a somewhat antiquated UI (think circa-2007 PHP app).

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#25

Fun fact: the US government has the ability to tell you how much you should be paying in taxes, and to pre-fill your tax returns. However this has been prevented by lobbyists from the tax preparation industry http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100124/1836527884.shtml

They do it anyway. I've been surprised by how many times the IRS have told me about mistakes...and then send me a check since I paid too much.

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#28

Personally, I don't understand why the IRS doesn't give me a way to electronically submit my taxes to them directly. I hate having to use a third party.

There's a service called "FreeFile" for federal taxes: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File:-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-...

States have their own programs (e.g. New York http://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/efile/pit_webfile.htm )

Re: Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

#30
I used to do mine on TaxAct, but since starting a company and having the accountant do the business taxes, my co-founder and I started to add ours to that as well. Yea, it costs more, but it really took me a long time to do it myself and I'm much happier letting someone else take care of all of it.
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